Egyptian military in the context of Egyptian Air Defense Forces

The Free Officers (Arabic: حركة الضباط الأحرار, romanized: Ḥarakat al-dubbāṭ al-ʾaḥrār) were a group of revolutionary Egyptian nationalist officers in the Egyptian Armed Forces and Sudanese Armed Forces that instigated the Egyptian revolution of 1952. Initially started as a small rebellion military cell under Abdel Moneim Abdel Raouf, which included Gamal Abdel Nasser, Hussein Hamouda, Khaled Mohieddin, Kamal el-Din Hussein, Salah Nasr, Abdel Hakim Amer, and Saad Tawfik, it operated as a clandestine movement of junior officers who were veterans of the Palestine War of 1948–1949 as well as earlier nationalist uprisings in Egypt in the 1940s.

The nationally respected Arab-Israeli War veteran Mohamed Naguib joined the Free Officers in 1949. Naguib's hero status, and influence within the army, granted the movement credibility, both within the military and the public at large. He became the official leader of the Free Officers during the turmoil leading up the revolution that toppled King Farouk in 1952. The Movement was succeeded by the Revolutionary Command Council after the overthrow of Farouk that was later succeeded by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

Mohamed Salah al-Din al-Halim Zaidan (Arabic: محمد صلاح الدين الحليم زيدان; born 11 April 1960/1963), commonly known by his nom de guerre Saif al-Adel (Arabic: سيف العدل, lit. 'sword of justice'), is an Egyptian Islamic militant who is the de facto leader of al-Qaeda. Previously an Egyptian Army officer, Al-Adel fought the Soviets as an Afghan Arab before becoming a founding member of al-Qaeda. He is a member of al-Qaeda's Majlis al-Shura and has headed the organisation's military committee since the death of Mohammed Atef in 2001. It is alleged that he is currently living in Iran along with several other senior members of the group though this remains unproven.

Once a colonel in Egypt's El-Sa'ka Forces during the 1980s, the Egyptian military expelled al-Adel in 1987 and arrested him alongside thousands of Islamists amid allegations of attempting to rebuild the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and plans to topple Hosni Mubarak. The charges were dismissed, though al-Adel soon left Egypt for Afghanistan, joining Afghan Arab mujahideen resisting the Soviet invasion under the banner of al-Qaeda forerunner Maktab al-Khidamat in 1988. al-Adel would go on to become the chief of newly formed al-Qaeda's media department, and was involved in the production of Osama bin Laden's videos which quickly found audiences worldwide. By the early nineties, al-Adel is thought to have then traveled to southern Lebanon with Abu Talha al-Sudani, Saif al-Islam al-Masri, Abu Ja`far al-Masri, and Abu Salim al-Masri, where they trained alongside Hezbollah Al-Hejaz. Sometime after, al-Adel became a member of the AQ Shura council, and by 1992 had become a member of its military committee, then headed by Muhammad Atef. He has provided military and intelligence training to members of al-Qaeda and Egyptian Islamic Jihad in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Sudan, and to anti-American Somali tribes. Shifting to Khartoum in 1992, al-Adel taught militant recruits how to handle explosives. It is possible that his trainees included Somalis who participated in the first Battle of Mogadishu in 1993. al-Adel also established the al-Qaeda training facility at Ras Kamboni in Somalia near the Kenyan border.