[a][11] In 2016–2017, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) had 40,000 members participating in the Yemeni Civil War (of which 10,000 returned to Sudan by October 2019).

[20] The Equatoria Corps mutinied at Torit on 18 August 1955, just before independence, prompting the formation of the Anyanya guerilla movement and the First Sudanese Civil War.

[23] "In the aftermath of the 1954 Torit mutiny, Northern servicemen who had left the forces after the Second World War were allowed to return to the colours, and additional recruitment took place.

On 25 May 1969, several young officers, led by Colonel Jaafar Nimeiry, seized power in a military coup, thus bringing the army into political control for the second time.

Sudan sent a brigade with infantry and supporting elements to the Sinai peninsula as a reinforcement to the Egyptian forces during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

[29] The bulk of the equipment used by the ground and air forces throughout the 1970s until the early 1980s was of Soviet manufacture, including tanks, artillery, and MiG combat aircraft.

[34] In 2004, the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress estimated that the Popular Defence Forces, the military wing of the National Islamic Front, consisted of 10,000 active members, with 85,000 reserves.

Other elements are understood to include a Special Forces battalion with five companies; an airborne division and a border guard brigade.

As part of the Yemeni Civil War, dozens of Sudanese soldiers were reported killed in an ambush by Houthis in Hajjah Governorate in April 2018.

[41] The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement which ended the second civil war, stated that "... there shall be formed Joint/Integrated Units during the Pre-Interim and Interim Period from the SAF and the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). ...

"[42] The JIUs were to consist of: (Chapter VI, Security Arrangements, Paragraphs 20.13.2.1 and 20.13.2.2) According to the Catholic "Voice of Hope" radio station in Wau, the Salam Forces military of Major-General Eltom Elnur Daldoum, who has a Misseriya background[43] and operated in the Deim Zubeir area,[44] joined the Sudan Armed Forces and became part of the Joint Integrated Units in Wau during the interim period.

But in the face of high hopes, the three most serious breaches of the CPA's permanent ceasefire resulted directly from the actions of JIU battalions and brigades.

Sudan Tribune interpreted the changes in military leadership as a strategy by al-Burhan to "tighten his grip on the army after the removal of Islamist generals.

A two-year program, emphasizing study in political and military science and physical training, led to a commission as a second lieutenant in the SAF.

The proliferation of small arms in Sudan originated during the occupation of the country by Ottoman and Egyptian forces and by the colonial powers, especially Britain and France, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

[58] The standard issue battle rifle is now an H&K G3 variant that is domestically manufactured by Military Industry Corporation and referred to as the Dinar.

[citation needed] Armored vehicles are produced, maintained, and repaired at the Elshaheed Ibrahim Shams el Deen Complex in Khartoum.

A visit by Josip Broz Tito, the President of Yugoslavia, to Sudan in 1959 helped build the impetus to create the Sudanese Navy.

The navy had two 70-ton, 75-foot, Kadir-class coastal patrol craft (Kadir [129] and Karari [130]), both transferred from Iran to Sudan in 1975, as well as sixteen inshore patrol craft and two supply ships: The navy, according to 2004 estimates from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, had 1,800 personnel, and a base at Marsa Gwayawi on the Red Sea.

[58] The accord provided for shared planning and staffing; the Egyptians also supplied Sudan with ammunition and various types of weaponry, such as antitank missiles and armored personnel carriers.

[58] Al-Bashir reaffirmed the pact after his 1989 coup, but the Egyptians declined to supply additional military aid after Sudan refused to condemn the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

[58] After FY 1987, no assistance was extended with the exception of less than US$1 million annually for advanced training for SAF officers and maintenance for previously supplied equipment.

[58] In March 1990, the United States invoked a provision of the act barring aid to regimes that overthrow a democratic government.

[58] Various Middle East and Gulf countries, particularly Iran and Libya but also Egypt, provided more than US$2 billion in "economic aid" in the 1970s, much of which Khartoum used to buy weapons.

[58] As was the case in earlier decades, Sudan continued to rely on an array of suppliers, among them Belarus, China, Egypt, Iran, Romania, Russia, Poland, and South Africa, for ammunition, armored vehicles, helicopters, howitzers, infantry fighting vehicles, attack and fighter aircraft, multiple rocket launchers, main battle tanks, and transport aircraft.

[58] Sudan manufactured at least a small amount of ammunition for light weapons in the early 1960s, but the country's capacity to produce arms greatly expanded with the opening of the GIAD industrial city south of Khartoum in October 2000.

[58] Although information was limited, in the early 2000s this equipment included heavy and light artillery, antitank and antiaircraft guns, machine guns and small arms, tanks, and armored personnel carriers, as well as ammunition for these weapons; the country also had acquired the ability to assemble and maintain aircraft, including fighter and cargo airplanes and helicopters.

[58] The SPLM/A, under the late John Garang's leadership, regularly accused the SAF of using chemical weapons in South Sudan, but these allegations were never substantiated.

[58] Similarly, news reports in 2004 that Sudanese and Syrian troops had tested chemical weapons against civilians in Darfur were never confirmed.

On 25 April 2023, footage emerged of thermobaric shells captured by Sudanese army, which shows its manufacturing in Serbia in the year 2020, then supplied through the UAE to Sudan.