NATIONAL NEWS - Analysts say years of funding cuts and skills losses have left the SANDF unable to mount a credible defence.
South Africa faces no immediate threat of external attack, but the SA National Defence Force (SANDF) is impaired to the point that the country is in no position to repel one, defence analysts say.
Even if the SANDF had not suffered a major loss of funding, critical capabilities and operational skills over the past decades, defence analyst Dean Wingrin said the US military is in a league of its own.
He said the US military would have less trouble dealing with the SA military than it did with the Venezuelan armed forces in the weekend strike.
“With the current state of the SANDF, we are not in a position to fend off any attack,” he said.
SANDF ill-equipped to counter external threats
South Africa’s position at the tip of Africa placed the US at a logistic disadvantage, but the US military could handle it as it has aircraft carriers at sea, long-range missiles and strategic bombers capable of operating from the continental US and Ascension Island in the mid-Atlantic.
“We saw the severe hammering Iran received and it had large numbers of modern air defence systems and forewarning of strikes.
“Yet their military still suffered badly during the limited engagement,” he said.
Wingrin said it was unrealistic to expect SA to fend off an attack if America engaged in regime change outside its new doctrine of focusing on dominance in the western hemisphere.
He said SA should be looking at equipping and funding itself to compare with its African peers.
It cannot afford to lose any more capability, nor should it.
"The best defence for SA and its economy in the new world order is to re-evaluate its past practices and make wise political pronouncements and economic policies, putting non-alignment into practice,” Wingrin added.
SA's modest fleet could dissuade action
Helmoed-Römer Heitman, a defence expert, said SA’s modest submarine fleet may be far from an advantage against global military powers, but it could play a realistic deterrent role in forcing powerful actors to think twice before targeting the country’s waters.
He said a small submarine force of about six vessels would not deter a major power from an act important to its interests, but it would precipitate a careful risk and benefit analysis that might dissuade military superpowers from action in those waters.
To achieve this, the SA Navy would have to get its fleet working, upgraded, get new torpedoes and mines and, preferably, also missiles.
SA far away and too unimportant
“I do not see any of the major powers; US, China, India and Russia, [which] has shot its bolt and apart from nukes is a has-been on the way down, broken economy and shrinking population, being bothered by us. We are too far away and too unimportant.”
According to Heitman, there are two possible exceptions: should there be a war between China and the West, which he does not foresee, the Western powers would need the sea route around the Cape.
He said China would not, and would seek to prohibit it.
“That would impact our economy so we would be forced to try and protect our waters as a neutral safe zone, or be sucked in to join the Western powers.
“The key then would be an expanded submarine fleet and long-range maritime aircraft. The only other solution would be for India to come to our aid, given the hostility between them and China.”
Proxy force inserted into part of Africa if cold war
He said should there be a cold war between China and the US and other Western powers, there could be a proxy force inserted into part of Africa.
“We would not want that in our neighbourhood so would need to be able to either counter that force or make the deployment and support too risky. The latter is where a submarine force would come into the picture,” Heitman said.
He said the late defence minister Joe Modise told him and others that the SA Navy’s three Daphné submarines were the key limiting factor to the Soviet’s level of involvement.
Heitman said this was why everyone in Cabinet at the time was keen to buy new submarines.
Article: Caxton publication, The Citizen
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