HQ-12

The HQ-12, also known by the export designation KS-1A and by the name Red Banner-12, is a Chinese medium-range surface-to-air missile system meant to engage aircraft and helicopters at all altitudes, by day or night and in any weather. It was designed by the Jiangnan Space Industry company, also called Base 061, and development began in the early 1980s as a replacement for the aging HQ-2, a Chinese copy of the Soviet S-75. The transportable KS-1 version was tested in 1989, shown at the 1991 Paris Air Show and finished in 1994, but it never reached mass production because neither the Chinese army nor foreign buyers placed orders. The improved KS-1A added a mobile launcher on a cross-country 6x6 chassis and the H-200 multifunction radar, and from 2001 the China Precision Machinery Import-Export Corporation offered it on the world arms market. A single-stage missile about 5.6 metres long and 400 millimetres across, it carries a 100 kilogram fragmentation warhead and flies at up to 1,200 metres per second under radio command guidance. Its public showing in 2007 under the HQ-12 designation pointed to possible Chinese army adoption, and as of 2018 the system served in Myanmar, Turkmenistan and Thailand. The later HQ-22 grew out of it.