Pakistan Displays ANZA Mk-III Shoulder-Fired Missile for Low-Altitude Air Defense In Riyadh.

Pakistan showcased its ANZA Mk-III shoulder-fired air-defense missile at the World Defense Show in Riyadh on 9 February 2026, emphasizing low-altitude protection against helicopters and drones. The display highlights how modern conflicts are driving renewed demand for affordable, man-portable air defense systems that can counter low-cost aerial threats.

Army Recognition teams on the ground at the World Defense Show in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, documented and examined Pakistan’s ANZA Mk-III shoulder-fired air-defense missile on 9 February 2026. Presented as a complete firing post with launch tube and gripstock, the system was staged beside larger strike-missile displays, a deliberate contrast that underscored the exhibitor’s message: modern air defense starts at the lowest tier, where helicopters, loitering munitions, and drones exploit terrain and radar shadows to penetrate defended airspace at very low altitude.
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Pakistan's NAZA Mk-III MANPADS provides close-in, low-altitude air defense with a dual-band IR seeker, engaging helicopters, aircraft, and larger drones out to about 6 km up to roughly 3,500 m, with fast reaction time, high missile speed, and a fragmentation warhead designed for lethal endgame performance (Picture source: Army Recognition Group).

ANZA Mk-III sits in the 6 km class of man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS), built for rapid “shoot, relocate, survive” engagements. The launcher-and-missile assembly weighs about 18 kg, and the missile itself roughly 11.3 kg, with an overall launcher length of around 1.59 m, placing it squarely in the one-soldier carry category while still remaining practical for two-man teams with a spotter and security element. The missile is credited with a maximum engagement altitude of roughly 10 m to 3,500 m and a top speed above 600 m/s, with a short reaction time cited at about 3.5 seconds, all of which matters when the target is a fast pop-up helicopter or a fixed-wing aircraft crossing a valley line at low level. Guidance is described as dual-band infrared homing, a key discriminator in an era where flares are cheap, ubiquitous, and increasingly scripted into aircraft defensive suites. Army Recognition’s technical data on the ANZA family also lists a high-explosive fragmentation warhead in the Mk-III category, with contact and graze fuzing, and the Riyadh display literature highlighted updated digital electronics and a proximity-fuze approach intended to improve lethality when a perfect direct hit is not guaranteed.

The Mk-III story is best understood as the latest step in a long, pragmatic Pakistani program that tracks the evolution of Chinese-origin MANPADS designs, moving from early-generation concepts toward seekers and counter-countermeasures suited to modern battlefields. The program reflects a pattern seen in several countries that sought to build domestic capacity in this segment by leveraging licensed production and transferred technical foundations rather than starting from a clean-sheet design. Public timelines widely report the series moving from Mk-I fielding in the early 1990s, to Mk-II upgrades, and then to Mk-III production announced in the mid-2000s, with industrial stewardship shifting over time toward Pakistan’s export-facing defense marketing structures. For Army Recognition’s audience, the implication is straightforward: the ANZA Mk-III is less a “new invention” than a maturation program aimed at tightening seeker performance, engagement envelopes, and usability at the squad and platoon level.

Operationally, the system’s value is tactical and positional. A country can use ANZA Mk-III to harden airbases, ports, ammunition points, and maneuver corridors by placing small teams on likely aircraft ingress routes, forcing attackers to climb, detour, or expend countermeasures early. In a layered defense, MANPADS teams serve as the final tripwire inside the minimum range of medium-range surface-to-air missiles and behind terrain-masking that defeats radar line-of-sight. The same teams can be truck-mounted for convoy air defense, or dispersed as pop-up ambush elements when intelligence indicates hostile rotary-wing activity. In practice, this is where modern conflicts have pushed investment: not every threat warrants an expensive interceptor, but a shoulder-fired missile positioned at the right choke point can deny an entire low-altitude approach lane. The dual-band infrared concept is especially relevant against aircraft that rely on flare patterns and flight profile changes to break lock, although very small quadcopter-class drones can remain difficult targets for any heat-seeker due to weak signatures and clutter.

On users and exports, Pakistan is the core operator across services, with the ANZA family presented as a domestic answer to the enduring close-in air-defense problem. Beyond Pakistan, open-source reporting and imagery-based investigations have indicated that ANZA variants have appeared outside their original inventory, particularly in conflict zones where stocks of legacy MANPADS have circulated widely over the past decade. These observations underline the system’s portability and the persistent global demand for basic short-range air-defense solutions. Separately, media reporting in recent years has suggested that Pakistan has explored supplying earlier ANZA variants to partner states facing acute air threats, highlighting how demand for shoulder-fired air defense has surged worldwide as drones and low-flying aircraft proliferate.

Against competitors, ANZA Mk-III competes in the same operational niche as the Igla family and Chinese FN-series MANPADS, offering a familiar 6 km-class engagement logic with an emphasis on improved resistance to countermeasures. Where newer Western offerings often differentiate is seeker sophistication and integration ecosystems rather than raw portability alone; modernized systems increasingly stress enhanced fuzing and broader target sets, and some have moved toward heavier missiles or tripod-based solutions that trade one-soldier agility for longer reach and higher confidence against small, low-signature targets. Pakistan’s pitches ANZA Mk-III remains as an affordable, tactically agile answer for states that need credible low-altitude denial now, and want a MANPADS inventory that can be trained, sustained, and fielded at scale without building an entire high-end air-defense architecture first.