uring a firing drill held at the Arabian Sea, a Pakistani Navy Zulfiqar-class frigate hit air targets using the Chinese FM-90N ER air defence missile.
The Pakistani Navy announced the successful live round tests of the FM-90N ER point defence missile. Multiple highly manoeuvrable aerial targets were hit during the firing drill. Zulfiqar-class frigate, which fired the missile was also used as the testbed for the recent test of P-282 SMASH anti-ship ballistic missile.
The FM-90N ER variant was mentioned for the first time, which indicates a range extension of 15 km on the baseline FM-90N missile.
FM-90N is the naval export variant of the HQ-7B missile, which is based on the French Crotale air defence missile using MCLOS guidance, in which radar or other sensors can be used for target tracking. The shipborne launcher can hold up to eight missiles, while the ground-based launcher for FM-90 holds four due to carrying a fire control radar.
Pakistan is also using the FM-90 system, the ground-based export variant of HQ-7B.
