https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Scorpion
The film was produced by Jack Abramoff, a Republican Party lobbyist known for promoting the Reagan Doctrine and U.S. aid to anti-communist guerrilla movements such as Jonas Savimbi's National Union for the Total Independence of Angola during the Cold War. Abramoff also established the International Freedom Foundation financed by the South African apartheid regime. When Abramoff left Citizens for America, he hired Arne Olsen to write a screenplay modeled after the Angolan Civil War. The film allegedly received financial aid from South Africa as part of its propaganda efforts to undermine international sympathy for the African National Congress.
Production began in Swaziland, but was halted by the government in September 1987 after South African agents assassinated eleven ANC members in the country. Abramoff decided to shoot the film in Namibia, which was under South African occupation as South West Africa, despite filming in the country being discouraged by the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act. When production resumed in 1988, Artists and Athletes Against Apartheid condemned the film for breaking the international boycott against South Africa. Warner Bros. Pictures, who had a negative pickup deal to release the picture on the condition that it was not filmed in South Africa, pulled out for the breach of their contract after anti-apartheid activists began picketing the studios.
The Namibian reported that the South African Defence Forces provided military equipment to use during the production, including captured Soviet T-54 tanks. Active duty South African soldiers from Operation Crowbar also served extras playing Soviet Army and Cuban Revolutionary Army personnel. This allegation was later confirmed by an SADF spokesman in the pro-government newspaper Republikein. Filming occurred at an SADF film studio in Windhoek and in Swakopmund.