Graeme Hosken
August 08 2008 at 06:58AM
The South African Air Force (SAAF) is almost powerless to defend the country from an aerial attack or control the country's skies.
The crisis of having no fighter jet cover was revealed through damning answers from the defence ministry on the cash crisis facing the defence department after questions put to it by the Democratic Alliance (DA).
The cashflow problems have revealed that the military has been rendered almost entirely powerless to repel an aerial attack against South Africa.
Of the 366 posts available for the Gripen, Hawk and Augusta helicopter programmes, which include air and ground crew, nearly half (153) are vacant.
According to military tacticians it is a well-known fact that anyone who controls the battlefield's skies controls the battle arena.
According to South Africa's leading military analyst Helmoed Heitman, the military's crippling cash crisis is what led to the early retirement of South Africa's fighter jet force, the Cheetahs, nearly four years before they were to be decommissioned.
The Cheetahs were meant to be retired between 2010 and 2012 to avoid any gap that could be created before the arrival of the Gripen.
SAAF chief Lieutenant-General Carlos Gagiano confirmed Heitman's statement, saying a lack of funding did not allow for both the Cheetah and Gripen programmes to be operated simultaneously.
The Cheetahs, which were stationed at Air Force Base Makhado in Limpopo near the Zimbabwe border, were decommissioned in April at the height of the election crisis in Zimbabwe, which has an arsenal of fighter jets.
Zimbabwe's aircraft arsenal includes an estimated six MiG23s, 18 F7s (Chinese equivalent of the MiG21) and 12 Nanchang K8 fighter jet trainers and six 6 MI35 Russian attack helicopters.
Zimbabwean fighter crew, who have been training South African fighter pilots for the past three years, are among the best on the continent, battle-hardened from that country's involvement in the Democratic Republic of Congo's crisis during the late 1990s.
The SAAF is currently operating only 24 Hawk lead-in fighter trainer jets and 12 Rooivalk attack helicopters, which have yet to be operationally tested.
Of the 16 decommissioned Cheetahs, only two two-seater Cheetah Ds are being kept operational at the SAAF's Flight Test and Development Centre in the Western Cape.
While Gagiano says if a crisis developed the Cheetahs and the Hawks would be used to repel the threat, Heitman said the Hawks had no radar system, were not supersonic and couldn't be fitted with long-range radar guided air-to-air missiles.
If the missiles were fitted they would be useless because the aircraft does not have the radar system that is required to operate such weapons.
Heitman said: "In the African context the fact that we do not have a fighter air cover means that we do not have a defence force.
"If we were told to intervene in Zimbabwe we would not be able to do anything because the Zimbabwe air force, which is very competent, has aircraft that can shoot down transport aircraft and carry out ground attacks.
"We cannot shoot down aircraft or protect our ground forces and if you cannot dominate the air you cannot operate.
"If you do not have fighter jets you are vulnerable and until such time the Gripen arrives we are toothless," he said.
Heitman said the cash crisis had led to the disappearance of the country's fighter cover and the shortage of personnel.
"It boils down to primarily a cash issue. The SAAF cannot pay the pilots and ground crew properly or fly their aircraft properly," he said.
Asked if the Rooivalk helicopter could fill the gap created by the decommissioning of the Cheetah, Heitman said there were too few and not enough money.
"While the South African army has anti-aircraft capabilities they are limited to the short-range 35mm Orelikon cannon and the short-range Starstreak anti-aircraft missile," he said.
He said there were no medium or long range anti-aircraft defence systems available yet.
Len le Roux, of the Institute of Security Studies, said according to defence policy South Africa's core military capabilities and expertise had to be maintained.
He said the situation South African found itself in showed that "we are way out of line with the policy with bad management and underfunding ensuring that we are far below the readiness levels required", he said.
He said the only solution was to urge the defence department to either change its policy, close the defence force, or put their money where its mouth is and fund it.
Le Roux said: "It is this precise reason why our defence force is run down with aircraft that cannot fly."
Gagiano admitted he was gravely concerned by the situation.
"Because of funding we had to close the Cheetah programme so that we could start the Gripen programme. The bottom line is that our funding does not allow two systems to be operated simultaneously."
On staff shortages Gagiano said it was impossible to compete with the private industry which offered R200 000 a year compared to the R48 000 offered by the SAAF.
"You just cannot fight this. It is a frantic cutthroat fight for skilled people in the aviation world. We are training people as fast as we can to stop the drain of skills and are speaking to the private industry to curb this problem," he said, adding planes were arriving all the time, with six Gripens expected in 2009.
o This article was originally published on page 1 of Pretoria News on August 08, 2008
No choice but to leave
Andrew Kenny’s column appears in The Citizen every Tuesday.
As the skills shortage in South Africa worsens and the exodus of white artisans, engineers and maths teachers continues, racial affirmative action dominates all job adverts. Suppose you are a highly experienced white technician or project manager. You are looking for a job. In the careers section of a Sunday paper you see an advertisement for vacancies in your field. Then you see the words “employment equity” or “equity plan” or “designated groups” followed by the words, “Should you not receive communication within 2 weeks of the closing date, please accept that your application was unsuccessful.” You can be pretty sure any application from you would go straight into the bin. These words actually seem to mean: “White men need not apply.”
So you had better continue turning the pages of the careers section until you come to job advertisements from Australia or the Middle East. Apply there.
Now consider advertisements not for jobs but customers. Suppose a school was advertising for pupils, and said, “All of our teachers are affirmative action appointees”. How many parents would choose to send their children there?
How many people would choose to be represented in court by affirmative action lawyers? More important, how many poor people in the townships suffering bad water supply and sanitation would choose affirmative action engineers?
The ANC elite calls for affirmative action for the services other people receive but not for the services it receives. The Minister of Education does not send her son to a school where there are affirmative action teachers; she sends him to Bishops, a rich private school with mostly white teachers. Jacob Zuma did not choose an affirmative action lawyer to represent him.
Racial affirmative action is bad for whites and blacks. It is driving skilled whites abroad, demoralising blacks and harming the economy. It does not address the legacy of apartheid; it perpetuates it.
So how should we address our inequalities of the past? Just follow the example of the ANC elite who always choose services for themselves purely on merit. Allow all black parents to emulate the Minister of Education and send their children to the schools they think have the best teachers.
http://www.citizen.co.za/index/artic...esc=76600,1,22
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