South African Air Force delivers more with less

Despite budget cuts and a tight economy worldwide, the South African Air Force (SAAF) is able to deliver a credible force and continue its multiple roles of deterrent, air-sea rescue, training, maritime and land surveillance and even fire fighting.

This is according to the leadership of the SAAF which invited media to a breakfast and briefing, which was attended by Digital Journal. This comes the day before the Waterkloof Air Show, a once-off demonstration to welcome the return next year of the African Aerospace and Defence (AAD) show.

Brigadier General Tebogo Samuel Madumane, Officer Commanding Waterkloof Air Force Base (AFB) in Pretoria, said the air show was to test systems in place for next year’s major international event, the biggest air show and defence exhibition in Africa.

He said the main South African fighter types as well as locally-built helicopters including the Denel Oryx and the Rooivalk attack helicopter along with other air show favourites would be put through their paces. He added that from foreign countries, the United States would showcase its C-17 heavy lifter, the KC-135 tanker and a Hercules C-130 J, the up-to-date version of a type also flown by South Africa.

Referring to the fact that South Africa’s president, vice-president and foreign heads of state landed at Waterkloof AFB (as US First Lady Michelle Obama did recently) Madumane said the base housed “military transport excellence”.

Brigadier General Piet van Zyl gave a presentation on the SAAF’s 48-year-old Hercules fleet and explained how the Air Force had managed to save large amounts on maintenance.

Van Zyl explained that by combining the capabilities of the state arms manufacturer, Denel Aviation and the SAAF, they could build and maintain a combined Maintenance and Repair Organisation (MRO). Recently, he said, the manufacturer, Lockheed, had a team visit the base and declare the almost 50-year-old fleet to be in “excellent” condition. Among the MRO’s achievements, he said, was cutting back the average time of a “minor” service on the aircraft from 182 to 84 days. This way, they had reduced down-time for the aircraft by 54 per cent.

In terms of the future, Chief of the Air Force Lieutenant General Carlo Gagiano said the aircraft could fly until 2020 and even longer, depending as always on cost factors.

Van Zyl said the maintenance and upgrades had cost 140 million Rands or about 20 million dollars as opposed to the approximate replacement cost for a new fleet of seven Hercules being about 7 billion rands, or about 1 billion dollars.

Speaking of the optimal use of its assets, Gagiano pointed out that Van Zyl himself was in the SAAF Reserve and as such his knowledge was very useful to the Air Force.

Brigadier General John Bayne, Director Combat Systems of the SAAF spoke of the new Cobra helmet-mounted sight for the SAAB Gripen multi-role fighter, which he said was unique in that it had to be fitted to the specific pilot before flights and as a result people on the apron were looking rather like something from another planet! He added that only the USAF’s F-22 Raptor pilots currently had something similar.

He said that despite its small size, the SAAF had a “world-leading training system” and that officers from international air forces came to observe the SAAF’s training. Currently there was an exchange system with Britain’s Royal Air Force.

Despite the South African National Defence Force’s (SANDF) very low budget (1,2 per cent of GDP) and constant defence cuts, the Air Force’s leaders attempted to put before the media the impression of a strong, well-trained force in both its combat training as well as maintenance arms.

The ongoing and likely increasing need for peace-keeping, anti-piracy operations and conventional training will certainly keep the SAAF busy for the foreseeable future.

Back in the day, I was riding in a taxi from Jan Smuts Int’l Airport in Jo’burg in to the city when a flight of SAAF C-130s were taking off. They were headed west to the Caprivi Strip where the SADF was engaged with guerrillas who were operating out of Angola. The Hercules’ mission was evacuating wounded from operations up there. It was reported that the Air Base ATC asked how many wounded one particular flight was bringing in. The pilot reported there were seven casualties aboard. The ATC asked about the racial makeup of the casualties so he’d know how many different ambulances to meet his flight. The pilot went ballistic and screamed at ATC that they were all South African soldiers, all wounded in action and all deserved equal treatment.

Interesting story. To date I am still trying to understand what the whole logic behind Apartheid was. How would it have helped the ATC chap to have different ambulances for the soldiers? Having one ambulance for the white South African soldiers and another from the black South African soldiers would have made his life better how, or made the war easier how? There are some bad things that make sense, and then there are some bad things that are absolutely illogical.

The ATC was merely “following orders.” Maybe if he’d seen first hand the SADF soldiers, black and white, fighting together against a common enemy, he might have changed his mind.

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