Sudan’s Army Fields About 100 Pakistani Mohafiz-V Armoured Vehicles

Sudan’s army has fielded around 100 Pakistani-made Mohafiz-V armoured vehicles since mid-2026, a delivery that gives the military a dedicated counter to the fast pickup trucks the Rapid Support Forces have relied on through more than two years of civil war.

Sudanese officers told Sudan Tribune in early August that around 100 of the vehicles had arrived in successive batches since July, with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) first showing them publicly in a convoy through Khartoum on 3 August 2026. The Defense Post and regional outlets have since confirmed the broad outline of the delivery, though neither Khartoum nor Islamabad has published formal contract terms.

What the vehicle is

The Mohafiz-V is built on a Toyota Land Cruiser LC79 chassis by Pakistan’s Heavy Industries Taxila, with later variants developed in cooperation with Pakistan’s Cavalier Group. It is roughly five metres long, carries up to eight personnel, and is rated to B6 ballistic protection against small-arms fire and fragmentation. A 200-horsepower turbo-diesel engine gives it a claimed top speed of 120 km/h and a range of around 600 km — figures drawn from manufacturer and secondary reporting rather than independent combat testing.

Sudanese officers quoted by Sudan Tribune said the vehicle’s armour and off-road mobility suit the open terrain of Kordofan and Darfur, where much of the current fighting between the Sudanese army and the RSF is concentrated — a conflict DefenceMENA has tracked in detail, including the growing role of drones on both sides of the Sudan war. Military Africa’s analysis, published this week, frames the Mohafiz-V as “a tactical counter to the RSF’s reliance on fast, open-top four-wheel-drive pickup trucks” — the so-called “technicals” that have given RSF units speed and reach across Sudan’s vast western and central regions.

Part of a larger, murky arms package

The vehicles are reportedly one element of a $1.5 billion Pakistani arms package first reported in January 2026. Reuters reported at the time that Saudi Arabia had brokered the deal, and in April that Islamabad had briefly paused shipments after Riyadh asked for the arrangement to be halted; deliveries nonetheless continued through the summer. Other reported components of the package — Shahpar drones, K-8 trainer spare parts, and in some accounts additional UAVs and Super Mushshak aircraft — remain unconfirmed by either government. Some reporting has named Qatar as a possible alternative backer; who is actually financing the deal is still unresolved, and SAF said in February only that it was in the “final stages” of concluding it.

The ambiguity matters because Sudan’s civil war is covered by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1591, a 2005 arms embargo that applies specifically to the Darfur region; the Council extended it on 8 October 2026 through 11 December 2026. No reporting reviewed for this article alleges that the Mohafiz-V shipments breach that embargo, since the vehicles are reported to have entered service with the national army rather than being supplied into Darfur directly, but the deal’s lack of transparency around financing and end-use sits inside a conflict the UN says has displaced more than 13 million people.

Why it matters for Africa

Sudan’s war has become one of the continent’s largest active battlefields for imported hardware, with both the SAF and the RSF drawing on foreign-sourced vehicles, drones and ammunition to sustain operations that have now run for more than two and a half years. A confirmed, if partially obscured, state-to-state armoured vehicle transfer of this scale shows that outside suppliers are still willing to arm the Sudanese military despite the humanitarian toll and the fall of El Fasher to the RSF in October 2025. It also illustrates how Gulf states’ competing interests in the Horn of Africa and Red Sea corridor are playing out through proxy arms flows rather than direct intervention — a pattern with implications for how other African conflicts involving contested outside patronage, from Libya to the eastern DRC, are likely to be supplied and prolonged.

Sources

• Sudan Tribune: “Sudan army receives Pakistani armoured vehicles and drones, military sources say”
• The Defense Post: “Sudanese Forces Expand Arsenal With Mohafiz Armored Vehicles From Pakistan”
• Military Africa: “Sudan’s Army Fields 100 Pakistani Mohafiz-V Armoured Vehicles”