To improve the land-based air defense for Chinese ground force, Chinese State Department and the Chinese Central Military Commission decided to develop a mobile low-to-medium level surface-to-air missile based on HQ-61B, and named the mobile SAM system as Hongqi-61A (红旗-61甲), or HQ-61A for short.
HQ-61A SAM system consists of three vehicles: launcher / transporter, radar vehicle, C2I vehicle, all of which are based on the same SX250 6 x 6 cross country truck to simplify logistics and reducing operational cost.