China to set up missile repair base in Bangladesh

Ajay Banerjee

New Delhi, February 17

A decade after China supplied Bangladesh with surface-to-air missile systems, a maintenance and overhaul facility will come up there which can double up as a production assembly line of the same missile and its advanced variants.

May double up as assembling facility

• Chinese firm ‘Vanguard’ has been selected as the partner for maintenance facility to be set up in Bang-ladesh for FM-90 missile systems
• Bangladesh is China’s 2nd largest arms customer
• Procured 17% of all Chinese military exports, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
• Pakistan procured about 38% of Chinese arms exports
• Beijing is fifth largest exporter of arms and weapons, accounting for some 5.2% of global sales

Chinese company “Vanguard” has been selected as partner of this maintenance hub to be set up in Bangladesh for the FM-90 air defence missile, sources say.

At present, Bangladesh’s Air Force, Navy and the Army are respectively equipped with it. The People’s Liberation Army has the same missile in its arsenal.

The truck mounted FM-90 system is an improved version of the “Hong Qi”, a missile first produced by the China National Precision Machinery Import and Export (CNPMIEC) in 1998. It was supplied to Bangladesh in 2011. Bangladesh is surrounded on three sides by India, while the fourth side is the Bay of Bengal. The missile is an anti-aircraft system capable of all-weather operations against flying objects like planes, missiles or drones.

It can operate against multiple targets. It has a 25-km range radar and is capable of launching simultaneous offensive against multiple targets, which includes ability to hit ultra-low-altitude cruise missiles, air-to-surface missiles and anti-radiation missiles at a distance of more than 16 km.

The missile is among the clutch of Chinese military-related investments and supplies to Bangladesh that includes warships, naval guns anti-ship missiles and surface-to-air missile systems.

China’s second largest arms customer is Bangladesh. The latest report of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), a Sweden-based think tank, on arms sellers during 2016-2020 says Bangladesh procured some 17 per cent of all Chinese military exports.

Pakistan procured 38 per cent of Chinese exports. Beijing is the fifth largest exporter of arms and weapons accounting for some 5.2 per cent of all global sales.