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Saudi Arabia
Royal Saudi Air Defense Forces
Saudi air defense units were separated from the army in the mid-1980s
to form a fourth service branch responsible for territorial air
defense. The new fourth command was initially entrusted to Amir
Khalid ibn Sultan Al Saud, son of the minister of defense and
aviation.
The air defense forces, with an estimated 4,000 personnel in
1992, had as their primary responsibility the operation of thirty-three
SAM batteries. Of these, sixteen batteries were equipped with
128 I-Hawk SAMs with a forty-kilometer range, which were emplaced
around Riyadh, Ras Tanura, Dhahran, Jiddah, and key air bases
at Khamis Mushayt, Hafar al Batin, and Tabuk, as well as the approaches
to strategic oil facilities of the Eastern Province. The remaining
seventeen batteries, forming a second line of air defense, were
equipped with sixty-eight Shahine SAM fire units with a range
of sixteen kilometers. These SAMs were a version of the French
Crotale missile system mounted on AMX-30SA chassis. This mobile
missile defense guarded the Saudi oil fields and other vital installations.
An additional seventy-three Shahine fire units were employed as
static defense. Both the IHawk and Shahine systems were linked
to AWACS and to the Peace Shield command and control system. In
addition to the missile defense, the air defense forces were equipped
with Vulcan 20mm self-propelled guns and 30mm guns mounted on
AMX-30SA chassis (see table 14, Appendix).
Data as of December 1992
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