Rawalpindi (Staff Report): Pakistan army has installed Chinese-manufactured LY-80 surface-to-air missile to its defence system, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the military’s public relations wing, said in a statement.
ISPR said that Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa was the chief guest at the ceremony to induct new missile system to Pakistan’s defence logistics.
Chinese-manufactured, LY-80 is a ground-to-air defence missile system, a land based version of the HQ-16 system used in ships (and fired from VLS-Vertical Launch System) containers. The HQ-16A is based on a joint development of the Russian Buk-M1 (SA-11 ‘Gadfly’) and Ural/Buk-2M (SA-17 ‘Grizzly’) Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) systems, for use from mobile ground vehicles and later from ships.
The missile is able to engage aerial targets at high altitude; the mid-range LY-80 is also able to intercept very low-flying targets at a distance of up to about 40 kilometers, filling the gap between the HQ-7 short-range SAM and the HQ-9 long-range SAM systems.