The International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, in its survey of the world's armed forces, says Guinea-Bissau has three MiG-17 fighter jets and three Alouette helicopters, plus two in-shore patrol naval craft.
Guinea-Bissau, a key transit point for international drug traffickers, will shoot down any aircraft that enters its airspace without permission, its prime minister has said.
Speaking during a visit to Lisbon, Martinho N'Dafa Cabi said he had personally issued the uncompromising order.
"From today, whatever aircraft that enters our airspace without having informed the competent authorities will be destroyed," the prime minister told journalists in Lisbon, according to news media reports published Friday.
"We have a state with rules, and there cannot be illegal flights over our territory," he said.
The measure was "a means of threatening" drug traffickers "who profit from our fragility," he said.
Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony in west Africa and the world's fifth poorest nation, has in recent years become a transit hub for European-bound cocaine originating from Latin America.
Traffickers exploit its weak self-defence capabilities to ship their contraband via the nation's Bijagos islands.
On August 21 the army in Guinea-Bissau seized 41 fuel pumps at an airport on one of the islands, Bubaque, used to refuel drug-hauling jet and turboprop aircraft with kerosene.
N'Dafa Cabi, who met his Portuguese counterpart Jose Socrates whilst in Lisbon, acknowledged that, from a logistical point of view, Guinea-Bissau lacked the means to oversee all of its airspace.
He called for an international conference to set out a strategy to combat drug trafficking.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, in its survey of the world's armed forces, says Guinea-Bissau has three MiG-17 fighter jets and three Alouette helicopters, plus two in-shore patrol naval craft.
