Posted on 06/28/2004 10:34:34 AM PDT by jriemer
The third new stealth corvette for the South African Navy arrived at the Simon’s Town naval base from Germany yesterday (Sunday, 30 May 2004).
SAS Spioenkop is the third in a series of four Meko A200-SAN class corvette/frigates ordered from the German frigate consortium, and follows SAS Amatola and SAS Isandlwana, which arrived in November and March respectively (see reports in this column dated 15 March 2004, 25 February 2004 and 11 November 2003).
A fourth corvette, SAS Mendi is expected in Simon’s Town later this year.
Why is South Africa Building A "Stealth Navy"?
To provide some fun targets for our newest planes.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1161751/posts
Maybe. The hulls are made from lightweight but steel-strong composite materials. If the materials are available on the open market, it's likely that they're pretty expensive.
http://www.hazegray.org/worldnav/europe/france.htm
Lafayette class patrol frigates
Displacement: 3,280 tons full load
Armament: 8-cell Crotale SAM, 8 Exocet SSM, 1 100 mm DP, 2 20 mm
So it has some Exocets, 8 little short-range SAMs, the big gun, and 2 20mm, on 3,000 tons displacement...which is really lame.
But it looks cool, though (probably one reason it sells well overseas.)
They may be wanting to protect themselves from hi-tech foes.
The reason they're getting these is their previous ships fell apart from age.
They have a lot of coastline, a lot of fisheries to protect, huge amounts of commerce passing through.
What they're getting are nice ships, but pretty standard for what world navies are buying now; they're no superships or anything, and irrelevant to the US Navy.
They also have most of the natural resources, and the ability to use them, in the southern hemisphere.
Well, it is French ....
you sacrifice a LOT to get stealth; the thing barely has any weapons
Does it have any VLS missiles or just the gun?
Just the gun, container Exocet SSMs, a helo (and no ship-mounted ASW weapons at all - but then it doesn't even have Sonar)
And kinda defeating the whole stealth plan: a non VLS and quite radar visible SAM launcher 
"South Africa's defense expenditures have nothing to do with defense needs or geopolitics, and everything to do with corrupt government officials taking massive bribes from the international arms industry. "
This is what I thought too. Buy the most expensive ship out there and it leaves plenty of money for kickbacks. Just another bunch of corrupt gov. officials getting fat off the backs of taxpayers.
These stealth frigates/corvettes are way too small to have any serious range or sea-keeping abilities. These are pure coastal defense vessels that are going to use their "stealth" design to hide in the radar/acoustic clutter of their own coastline. Of course this does nothing when it comes to space surveillance and little against AWAC's.
You don't see the USN breaking it's neck to jump on the bandwagon.
Because the Chinese ordered them to
Anything is on the open market if you have money and some kind of national status (if you have enough money they'd probably sell to individuals).
zodiac-class warship
That is funny as hell thanks
Given that the ANC are stealth Communists, and increasingly anti Western, I would regard this as future target acquisition. I'd say hit them as they are launched.
The purpose of the SA navy is purely to patrol the rather long coastline, to prevent an influx of illegal weapons, drugs, fish poachers and immigrants. There is no Coast Guard as there is in the US. Hopefully the new vessels will help, because up to now they have not been very successful in achieving any of those targets.
That's true of the Swedish design, but how much range/seakeeping do you need for the Baltic anyway?
But the South African Ships are just the latest version on the Meko-200 Frigate used by everybody. 3500 tons, range that matches an Arlegh Burke destroyer and the RAN/RNZN Anzacs seem to be coping with Southerm Ocean conditions.
You don't see the USN breaking it's neck to jump on the bandwagon.
Ah-hem. Littoral Combat Ship (LCS)
They may not be relevant to the U.S. Navy but in the region they will become quite a formidable fleet & force projection platform.
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