China has delivered FK-3 medium-range surface-to-air missile programs to Serbia as a part of a contract the European nation signed with China that additionally included drones. The supply was a part of the 2 nations’ annual cooperation plan, doesn’t goal any third events and “has nothing to do with the present scenario.” Serbia had signed for the missiles in 2020 below a contract that additionally included the China Aerospace Science and Expertise Company-made CH-92 armed drone. It’s believed the supply, which came about over the weekend, was for a battery of FK-3 medium-range, road-mobile, surface-to-air missiles.
The Chinese language used an air bridge to move the FK-3 missiles, and presumably different assist gear, to the Serbians, utilizing the Folks’s Liberation Military Air Drive’ thirteenth Transport Division, thirty seventh Air Regiment Xi’an Y-20 heavy airlifters flying between China and Serbia over two days. 6 Folks’s Liberation Military Air Drive Xi’an Y-20A (reg. 20041, 20042, 20045, 20047, 20049, 20142) have landed at Batajnica airbase, close to Belgrade, Serbia. Every day’s flights concerned six Y-20s, which made stopovers in Baku, Azerbaijan, and Istanbul, Turkey, and likewise flew over central Asia, Armenia and Bulgaria earlier than touchdown at Nikola Tesla Airport in Serbian capital Belgrade.
Commercial
The FK-3 is an export model of the HQ-22 surface-to-air missile system, and it retains the home model’s high velocity of Mach 6, though its most vary has been diminished from 170 kilometers to 150 kilometers. A typical HQ-22/FK-3 system consists of a radar automobile and three launch autos geared up with 4 missiles every. Every battery can supposedly interact six air targets concurrently. The HQ-22 entered service with the Chinese language Folks’s Liberation Military in 2017. The missiles are guided by semi-active radar steering with a secondary command steering functionality. It could actually reportedly interact ballistic and cruise missiles, plane, helicopters, and UAVs.
The missile system has been broadly in comparison with the American Patriot and Russia’s S-300 surface-to-air missile system, and though it has a shorter vary than S-300 variants such because the S-300PMU-2 it’s speculated to profit from superior digital warfare countermeasures (ECM) and superior capabilities in opposition to stealth targets at shorter ranges. The system is purported to be less expensive than the HQ-9 additionally in service and will likely be one of many mainstays of China’s air protection system, changing the HQ-2 missiles of the Chilly-Struggle period. It’s rumoured that the missile has had a excessive fee of acquisition, already being deployed in giant numbers regardless of its comparatively younger age.
