Sudanese Armed Forces Weapons and Military Equipment

EUAA describes the SAF as made up of the Land Force, Sudanese Navy, Sudanese Air Force, SAF Military Intelligence, and Border Guards. Around the outbreak of the 2023 war, cited personnel estimates ranged from about 120,000 to 200,000 when conventional units and special forces were counted. The same reporting identifies Abdel Fattah al-Burhan as commander-in-chief and notes that the officer corps viewed SAF as a pan-Sudanese institution, even as it was dominated by officers from central Sudan's Arab communities.

The SAF label is narrower than the whole pro-army coalition. EUAA lists Darfuri Juba Peace Agreement signatories, the Justice and Equality Movement, Sudan Liberation Movement-Minni Minawi, SPLM-N-Agar, Central Reserve Police, Popular Resistance battalions, popular-mobilization formations, and Islamist militias such as Al-Bara bin Malik Brigade among forces backing SAF in different places and periods. Those groups may fight alongside SAF or under army coordination, but their presence does not make every pro-SAF battlefield claim a regular-army claim.

The 2023 war grew out of the failed transition after Omar al-Bashir's overthrow and the collapse of a security-sector reform process. CFR summarizes the central dispute as one over the RSF's future integration into Sudan's legitimate armed forces under civilian leadership, with Hemedti's RSF and al-Burhan's SAF moving from uneasy partners to open belligerents.

SAF's early disadvantages were mostly on the ground. EUAA reporting says the army was trained to defend positions, hold territory, and conduct sustained attacks, but lacked mobile ground forces able to pursue RSF fighters through urban terrain. It used airpower, heavy artillery, and tanks to defend fixed locations and break sieges of garrisons, while RSF units dispersed through cities, occupied residential areas, and used mobility to attack supply lines and positions.

By 2025, the Khartoum front had shifted. Al Jazeera reported in March 2025 that SAF retook Khartoum airport and that al-Burhan declared the capital free after major advances, while analysts cautioned that the war was continuing in Darfur and southwestern Sudan. Human Rights Watch likewise noted the SAF's recapture of Khartoum-area territory but tied the period to ongoing civilian-harm allegations and continued fighting elsewhere.

SAF's clearest battlefield advantage has been the air domain. EUAA states that the RSF lacked fighter aircraft and that SAF carried out the conflict's airstrikes while relying on aircraft, artillery, tanks, and later combat drones. ADF reporting described Sudan's war as shifting toward a drone-heavy aerial contest, with SAF using Bayraktar TB2 drones during 2025 operations in the capital region and Al Jazirah while RSF expanded long-range drone attacks against SAF-controlled cities and infrastructure.

The equipment mix reflects decades of procurement, domestic assembly, and battlefield attrition. GIGA describes SAF as a conscripted force with an army, navy, and air force, supplied over the previous decade mainly by Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and China, while EUAA identifies Soviet/Russian, Chinese, and domestic-origin weapons in the inventory. Catalog-linked SAF records therefore include aircraft such as MiG-29s, armed UAVs, armored vehicles, tanks, artillery, ammunition, and logistics aircraft, with several records carrying caveats about capture, both-sides use, or disputed mission attribution.

Sudan's defense-industrial base is unusually important for a side profile because it sits close to the army's finances and supply chain. GIGA reports that more than 200 companies were under Sudan's Ministry of Defence authority in 2020 and that the state-run Military Industry Corporation produced ammunition, conventional weapons, armored vehicles, and other military items. It also describes Yarmouk Military Factory in Khartoum as Sudan's largest military manufacturer before its destruction in July 2023.

The U.S. Treasury sanctioned Defense Industries System in June 2023, calling it Sudan's largest defense enterprise and stating that it manufactured small arms, conventional weapons, ammunition, and military vehicles for SAF. In January 2025, Treasury also sanctioned al-Burhan and an individual and company involved in weapons procurement for DIS, describing DIS as a procurement arm of SAF and alleging efforts to acquire Iranian-made UAVs through unofficial means. Those designations are U.S. sanctions actions, not neutral inventory counts, but they are useful for understanding why SAF supply-chain claims often involve opaque corporate structures.