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Stories of the decline of South Africa’s army are nothing new.

A quick Google search reveals headlines like “South Africa’s army is in steady decline and nothing’s being done to fix it” from as far back in 2017, but those alarm bells seem to have gone largely unnoticed.

One of the more worrying parts of the latest report, via Business Day, is that it starts with the words “The SA army is not in as desperate straits as the navy”.

Always good to have a sense of perspective about these things.

Written by Helmoed Römer Heitman, an independent security and defence analyst, the report points to the age of the army’s main equipment as a major issue:

The army’s Olifant 2 tanks were upgraded in the 1990s from Centurions built in the 1950s; the Ratel infantry combat vehicles, the Casspir armoured personnel carriers and the 155mm G5 guns all date from the late 1970s and 1980s…

There are real capability gaps, such as air defence, where there are no mobile systems only some short-range Starstreak missiles and upgraded 1970s vintage towed 35mm cannon, albeit with modern radar systems.

A particular gap is defence against small unmanned aerial vehicles such as are used even by guerrilla groups for reconnaissance, command and control and attack…

I am again tempted to ask how many ministers or MPs drive 1990s, 1980s or 1970s cars? But they are happy to let our soldiers go to war in equipment of that vintage.

Helmoed, please remember these are ministers struggling to make ends meet, according to President Ramaphosa, with some barely pulling in R1 million a year.

If they’re going to be flown business class everywhere they go on taxpayer money, the least we can do is get them to the airport in something spiffy.

In the early 1990s, we were one of the best-equipped small armies in the world, but those days are long gone.

Some army vehicle repairs have been outsourced to Cubans (given how we drive them, that work may be plentiful), and there are air force worries, too:

[It] has too few Rooivalk and Oryx helicopters to effectively support the army in high-mobility operations; the Rooivalk and Gripen both lack precision weapons; and the air transport force is too small and lacks aircraft with the payload/range performance for regional missions…

Helmoed also points out that the average age of the infantry, which needs to be the fittest of all the branches, is 37, when it would ideally be somewhere closer to between 25 and 39.

In conclusion, he says our army is “understrength, overage and handicapped by obsolescent equipment and capability gaps”.

We’re a long, long way off facing the sort of guerilla warfare that Mozambique has faced, but our lack of firepower is far from ideal in an unstable region.

Read the full report here.

[source:busday]