During Angola's long-running civil war, MiG-21s of the Cuban Air Force were frequently deployed to attack ground targets manned by rebel forces or engage South African Air Force Mirage F1s conducting cross-border strikes. Most MiG-21 losses over Angola were attributed...
Air Force Base Ondangwa was initially established at the Ondangwa Airfield on 2 February 1972, under the name "Playboy". The only military presence at that time in the area was at Oshakati, which fell under 1 Military Area in northern SWA. It soon became the most...
Somali troops and US forces this week killed a senior commander of the Al-Shabaab militant group with a $10 million American bounty on his head, the African nation’s information minister said. The Al-Qaeda-linked Islamists have led a 16-year insurgency against the...
The Nigerian Air Force (NAF) is set to elevate its capabilities with the recent delivery of the first batch of two TAI T-129 ATAK attack helicopters from Turkey. This significant development marks a substantial enhancement in Nigeria’s defence capabilities and is part...
Several peacekeepers from the UN mission in Mali, currently in the process of withdrawing from the country, were “seriously injured” on Wednesday when their convoy fell victim to an improvised explosive device, a UN spokesman said. On Tuesday, peacekeepers from the...
UN soldiers Tuesday evacuated a camp in the strategic town of Kidal in Mali’s volatile north, which has been wracked by jihadist and separatist violence, several sources in the peacekeeping mission told AFP. “We left Kidal this morning,” a source in the UN...
This support contract is particularly essential as the South African Air Force has had to manage its tight budget carefully. South Africa has recently signed a contract with GKN Aerospace, a global engineering company, for the maintenance of the engines of its Gripen...
In the context of the former Portuguese colonial empire, the territories of Guinea and Cape Verde played an important role in the maritime and air routes connecting Southern Africa, where Portugal had two important colonies: Angola and Mozambique. Furthermore, on the...
Clashes have intensified in DR Congo’s east where the national army has deployed in areas it was chased out of at the start of the year, the United Nations and local sources said Monday. After a six-month lull, fighting resumed this month between local armed groups...
The Malian army said on Sunday that new fighting had broken out in the north between the military and armed rebel groups, the latest in a series of attacks on the army in the troubled West African country. The army reported on social media “intense fighting” against...
The POMZ-2M is a stake-mounted anti-personnel fragmentation mine made in the former Soviet Union. The body of the mine is a cast-iron thick-walled tube with five rows of cast fragmentation "chunks". This is usually mounted on a short wooden stake. Because the mine is...
The PMN is a bakelite-cased, pressure operated, anti-personnel blast mine (sometimes called the 'Black-widow'). Made in the former Soviet Union, it has been found in Afghanistan, Angola, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Chechnya, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Georgia, Honduras,...
The early MiG-23 variants had a number of design shortcomings, including airframe strength and reliability, engine performance, maneuverability and radar performance. A considerable redesign of the airframe was conducted, resulting in the MiG-23ML (L - Lyogkiy or...
The South African R1 series of rifles are based on the Fabrique Nationale de Herstal (FN) Fusil Automatique Léger (light automatic rifle) or FAL. Formally introduced by its designer Dieudonne Saive in 1951, and produced two years later, it has been described as the...
Long relying on foreign arms to stock its military inventory, the South African national army faced a dilemma of sorts when a UN arms embargo cut the nation off from outside support. The embargo began as a voluntary measure in 1963 and formed into a mandatory...
This is the short story of Fiat G.91R fighter bombers operated by the Força Aérea Portuguesa (FAP, Portuguese Air Force) in Angola [partially covered in War of Intervention in Angola Volume 1 published by Helion & Company]. None of the Fiat G.91R fighter bombers...