Namibia has once again displayed it’s Chinese-made FN-6A Man portable air defence missile system (MANPADS), which were shown on Thursday during the country’s 35th Independence Day and inauguration of Namibia’s fifth and first woman president Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah in Windhoek
Operated by the Air Defence Brigade of the Namibian Army based at Windhoek, which functions as the Army’s Air Defence Formation and hosts all the Air Defence regiments of the Army.
At the recent Heroes’ Day celebrations, the a pair of the FN-6A MANPADS were mounted on a Steyr truck. Namibia first revealed the system in early 2016 when President Hage Geingob toured the country’s military headquarters at Grootfontein and inspected a variety of military hardware.
The FB-6A mobile air defense missile weapon system is a type of short range air defense weapon used to intercept various fixed wing aircraft, helicopter, cruise missile and UAV effectively, and it is mainly applied to provide air defense for maneuver troops and vital assets.
The FN-6 is a third generation infrared-guided man-portable air defence system in service with the People’s Liberation Army and exported to around a dozen countries. The FN-6 has been used as the basis for several other Chinese surface-to-air missiles, such as the HN and FY series. The weapon has a range of 6 km and altitude of just under 4 km.
It’s various other functions are target detection, command & control, fire control and missile launch. The system mainly comprises Command Vehicle (CV), Firing Vehicle (FV) and FN-6 MANPAD missile.
Other hardware displayed includes a Zu-23-2 mounted on Wer’wolf MRAP, multiple rocket launchers, howitzers and a number of Agrale Marrua light vehicles, some fitted with Kord heavy machineguns.
The Air Defence Brigade of the Namibian Army also uses the following equipment: 37 mm automatic air defense gun M1939 (61-K), ZU-23-2, and 9K32 Strela-2.
Namibia is a ardent user of Chinese equipment, the country recently took delivery of Shaanxi Y-9 transport aircraft