Pakistan has unveiled a newly acquired Chinese-made short-range air defence system that analysts say could boost its ability to counter Indian drones and low-altitude threats in a future conflict.
A social media video posted by the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) on Sunday confirmed for the first time that it was operating the HQ-17AE short-range air defence (Shorad) system.
The HQ-17AE is an export version of China’s HQ-17A air defence system – a wheeled variant of the original HQ-17 that was reverse-engineered from the Russian Tor-M1 missiles.
The HQ-17AE has an operational range of up to 20km (12 miles) and a flight altitude of up to 10km. It is designed to engage with low-altitude and short-range threats such as unmanned aerial vehicles, helicopters, cruise missiles, guided munitions and aircraft.
It is known that it has been exported to Saudi Arabia, Serbia and Tajikistan. Pakistan’s revelation makes it the fourth foreign operator of the Chinese-made system.
Sunday’s video sought to promote the PAF’s multidomain operational skills, as deployed in the border conflict with India in May last year.
Apart from the HQ-17AE, air defence systems showcased included the also Chinese-made HQ-9P long-range surface-to-air missiles, as well as the Turkish-made Korkut self-propelled anti-aircraft gun and Sahin counter-unmanned aircraft system.
These systems are part of Pakistan’s new “layered integrated air defence system” designed to counter a range of modern aerial threats, including drone swarms.
The layered network deploys the HQ-9 for long-range aircraft and missile defence; the LY-80 – the export variant of the Chinese-made HQ-16 – against medium-range threats; and the HQ-17AE to counter short-range penetrators, complemented by the Turkish systems targeting drones and low-flying threats.
Jagannath Panda, head of the Stockholm Centre for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs, Institute for Security and Development Policy, said Pakistan was likely to view the HQ-17AE mainly as a mobile battlefield and point-defence system.
“More importantly, Pakistan appears to be filling a vulnerability at the lower end of its layered air-defence architecture,” Panda said.
“Its acquisition also reflects changes in warfare. Pakistan cannot economically use expensive long-range interceptors against every drone or loitering munition. The HQ-17AE gives it another layer for dealing with increasingly dense, low-altitude aerial threats.”
Panda added that the important question was whether the Pakistani military could network sensors, command systems and engagement procedures into a coherent layered architecture.
Liselotte Odgaard, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, said anti-drone defence was likely to be a key mission for the HQ-17AE in Pakistan but not its only one.
“However, it is probably less cost-effective against very small commercial drones than systems such as Korkut or Sahin,” she added, noting that the Turkish systems were “specifically optimised” to counter unmanned aerial systems.
China remains Pakistan’s top arms supplier and, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, accounted for 80 per cent of its total weapons imports between 2021 and 2025.
Pakistan’s acquisition of the HQ-17AE reflects the increasing use of low-cost, low-flying threats – such as drones – in modern warfare, given that border tensions with India continue to simmer.
Chinese-supplied platforms played a major role in Pakistan’s brief border conflict with India last year, when a J-10CE shot down an Indian Rafale fighter jet. Pakistan claimed to have downed four of the French-made 4.5-generation combat aircraft in the May 7-10 war.
This marked both the first reported combat kill by the Chinese fighter jet and the first-ever downing of a Rafale.
Odgaard said a successful integration of the HQ-17AE with Turkish systems by Pakistan would strengthen China’s export case “considerably”, by proving that Chinese systems could operate within mixed-vendor architectures.
“[It] makes Chinese short-range air defence solutions more attractive to countries already using Nato or Turkish equipment,” Odgaard said.
But the real test lay in actual combat, she pointed out. “Export success will depend less on technical compatibility alone and more on whether Pakistan can demonstrate effective real-world performance against drones, cruise missiles and saturation attacks.
“Combat credibility remains the strongest advertisement for any air defence system.”
Panda said the HQ-17AE could “matter” in any future India-Pakistan confrontation, which was “increasingly unlikely to be dominated simply by manned fighter aircraft”.
“The 2025 confrontation reinforced the significance of stand-off weapons, drones, electronic warfare and layered air defence. The HQ-17AE is designed precisely for this increasingly crowded lower-altitude battlespace,” Panda said.
The HQ-17AE’s successful integration into the Pakistani military indicated a denser layered air defence network intended to “raise the risks and costs of Indian stand-off and low-altitude strikes”, Panda added.
“The more consequential trend is therefore not one particular missile system, but Pakistan’s attempt to construct an increasingly integrated anti-access and air-denial architecture combining Chinese long- and short-range missiles with Turkish counter-drone and gun-based systems,” he said.
“That could gradually make the aerial offence-defence competition between India and Pakistan more technologically intensive.” -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
