The air defense command maintained its headquarters at Port Sudan and was commanded by a major general. A secondary command post was at Omdurman. One of its two brigades was equipped with antiaircraft guns and the other was armed with SAMs (see table 14, Appendix). The three battalions of SAMs had been introduced to provide high- and medium-altitude air defense for Port Sudan, Wadi Sayyidna, and Khartoum. In the absence of Soviet technicians who had serviced the missiles and associated radar during the 1970s, the SA-2 systems were considered to be nonoperational.
The second air defense brigade was deployed to provide tactical air defense in the Western Command and Southern Command. In addition to Vulcan 20mm self-propelled guns supplied by the United States, it was equipped with a variety of weapons whose operational status was uncertain. Fire control and acquisition radar for the Vulcan and other systems was provided by the United States, Egypt, and France. The vulnerability of Sudanese air defenses was exposed in 1984 when a Libyan Tu-22 bomber was able to overfly much of the country in daylight, dropping bombs in the vicinity of the national radio station at Omdurman at a time of tension between Nimeiri and Qadhafi.
Data as of June 1991