₦airaland Forum

Frumentum:
I take it you mean these two?

PIC1: They needed an anti-tank capability for the Parabats, so they fitted a 90mm gun from an Eland to a 6-pounder anti-tank gun carriage. It was an effective weapon and the Jakkals jeep towed it easily, but the time it took to bring it into action and its lack of mobility caused them to reject it.


PIC2: The Ferret has a 106mm recoilless gun with protective sleeve mounted and Armscor had fitted armoured windows in place of the periscope for the driver. The towed gun is the 90mm which was also found not suitable for engaging armour in the bush.

One wonders why they didn't simply use an Eland 90 instead of resorting to the towed 90mm. Two of those could be driven into a C-160.

Frumentum:
Throwback Thursday:

Parabats and their air-droppable vehicles: From prototype to production, featuring the Jakkals, Firefly and the Ferret.

What gun is that being towed by the Jakkals and the Ferret?

SADF section drills with two Ratels, c. 1978.

What looks suspiciously like a G6 discovered in Iraq.

Morocco; vehicle is a Panhard ERC 90 Sagaie.

Matador MRAP of Gabon during an amphibious landing exercise.

Elands of the SADF on parade during the 1990s. Just a few years after this photo was taken, most of these would be scrapped or relegated to storage.

frumentius:
Democracy continues its disturbing retreat

https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2018/01/daily-chart-21?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/

I would not put a great deal of stock in these map indexes which measure levels of democracy, freedom, corruption, etc.

I once worked for an organisation in a particular country - which shall go unnamed - that sent a letter to the US State Department protesting their decision to upgrade Country X's human rights/political freedom ranking.

To put things in perspective, countries which received a lower ranking were not eligible for certain types of aid. Therefore, by upgrading the index ranking and classifying Country X as "more free", it was now eligible to enter into more trade agreements with the US and qualify for more types of aid (including military aid).

The whole affair was bollocks. Nothing had changed in the political situation in Country X and in fact, a leading member of the opposition had just been blatantly murdered by the security forces. But Country X was about to enter into the US-spearheaded Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) and if its ranking had remained low that would've tossed a wrench into the works. The US was trying to counter Chinese influence in the Pacific and wanted Country X brought into its trade sphere; hence the upgraded ranking.

In essence, indexes are manipulated all the time for political reasons. And even if they weren't, some academic bubble-dwelling pencil pusher looking at charts in London or Geneva (or in this case, Stanford) ought not to stick arbitrary labels on a country like Nigeria - or indeed, RSA and Namibia - that he has never set foot in in his life.

SANDF Rooikat. The wheels on this one look interesting.

Ceremonial dress uniforms for the Zambian police reserve. Looking sharp, okes. Straight out of El Alamein.

Some close ups of the upgraded Cascavel turrets in Zim.

patches689:
5th Bd

Those are the ones who went to town on the Matabele right?

Yes. The brigade was so notorious for its excesses in Matabeleland and the Midlands that Mugabe had it disbanded in 1988.

There was some talk in 2006 about reactivating it, but I'm not certain if that actually happened.

Frumentum:
Hire Arms, a veteran-owned Johannesburg company that supplies weapons to SA’s film industry, found this rare North Korean manufactured PK-style belt fed machine gun in Zimbabwe. It was found without a stock, barrel or bi-pod (those parts were added by Hire Arms when they restored it).

I remember reading in a book entitled New Armies from Old about post-civil war militaries that Zimbabwe received over £12 million worth of weaponry from North Korea in 1981 and 1982. Most of this apparently went to the army's then-newly established 5th Brigade.

I assume that's how this particular MG ended up there; 5th Brigade has been disbanded but surely there are other examples either still in active service or in reserve storage.

AML-90 crew of Gabon.

Eland inspection and routine maintenance, late '80s. The engine on the latest Elands could be swapped out in forty minutes or less.

I just got Steenkamp and Heitman's book, Mobility Conquers: The Story of 61 Mechanised Battalion Group and what a smashing read it's been so far. There are some fascinating stories in there - like the one about the Eland which suffered an engine failure during Protea and was repaired while in motion (it was being towed by a Ratel).

Ratel prototype being tested in 1974. And the same vehicle, forty years later.

This prototype resides near the entrance of the mechanised base at Tempe.

Bots. I had completely forgotten the BDF had V-150s.

As I think I've mentioned on a previous occasion, I've been in one of these before. The hatch openings are some of the absolute widest I've seen of any wheeled armoured fighting vehicle in my life time. They are considerably wider than the hatch openings in a Ratel, for instance. The driver's position is also much, much more spacious as well.

Clearly built for big people in mind.

Chadian pantser okes with their AML-60.

Benin is currently holding army exercises.

nganduh:
"Not a coup". With a Type-89 mortar carrier

The vehicle in that second photo looks like the "relic" I alluded to earlier. Looks a great deal like some of those improvised mine-protected vehicles which started appearing in the late 70s.

I have no idea how the army kept it running, never mind looking in such pristine condition, with the budget and resources they have. Hats off to some unsung tiffies somewhere at Inkomo.

Apologies for the poor photo quality. This column of vehicles was photographed by the side of the road near Harare.

Check that vehicle behind the Cascavel.

Looks like some of the Rhodesian relics are coming out of storage in Zim.

First photo to emerge of one of the newly upgraded EE-9 Cascavels in Zim.

As I've mentioned on a previous occasion the upgrades were handled by a Saffer company (Boomslang Logistics) three years ago.

@Everybody else: if you see more photos of the Zimbabwean Cascavels, please post them here.

Ibrahimanees:
I once read about rivalry between Algerians and Moroccans but I didn't take seriously, but from how you vehemently refute the claim of s400, I should have taken it seriously, good thing there's no Moroccan here or the occasional melt downs would have been twice as worst...

Didn't Algeria and Morocco go to war once before?

newafricaken254:
Sudan army " SHAREEF-2 "Armoured Infantry Fighting Vehicle (AIFV)

Interesting, these look a lot like Ratels. Is there any connection?

ActivateKruger:
You could imagine the fear of the surviving crew of the other G5s in the formation (during the Battle of Cuito), having to continue loading shells for days with little break. For every shell you load could be your last.

Is there a specific incident you are referring to? I must confess I'm not aware of any G5 that was knocked out of action as a result of a barrel failure during Moduler, Hooper, or Packer.

Here's a real oddity - the only armoured car in the world being exhibited as a reminder of an engineering failure.

This Eland 90 blew its barrel when a defective 90mm round was being fired, resulting in one very unserviceable gun.

It currently resides at the aptly named "Defective Munitions Museum" in Pretoria. Interestingly, the museum is owned by Armscor rather than the SANDF and you need to make a special appointment with them if you want to see more like this unhappy Eland.

There's even a G5/G6 barrel in there that malfunctioned upon firing. I have no idea what the circumstances were behind that incident but I bet there was groot kak for everybody involved.

ActivateKruger:
So what's your problem?


We made the Rooivalk under crippling UN sanctions, in fact the UN had to later pass another resolution banning the export of weapons from South AfricaAfrica because we had turned the situation around... Yes we make plenty of unapologetic noise for because how many countries have the ability to develop weapons and scare the world while being sanctioned? Your airforce decayed into oblivion and you haven't recovered from a simple weapons embargo.


Our systems have some components from other countries, who doesn't?.... The question is how many countries are able to produce world-class weapon systems using those already available components? Definitely not Nigeria.. What have you produced in your latest military spending spree? An APC? Really? Only an APC that uses commercial tryes... We produced missiles, long range rockets and nukes when we were under threat, we are developing passive radars, 5th generation missiles, etc while we're at peace and then you come talk your rubbish here.

Grow up Augustine or simply crawl back to the cave you came from.

The misunderstanding in the thread seems to boil down to this:

It's correct that the majority of our defence products utilise foreign technology in some form or another.

However, most of that technology is not imported per se, but produced locally under various licensing agreements. So it's also correct that we have the capacity to manufacture all of it in RSA too.

To illustrate, let us consider one of the earliest successes of Armscor: the Ratel ICV.

The Ratel may be advertised as a fully South African-manufactured product, but the chassis design came from MAN (a West German company) and the hull was designed by Springfield-Bussing, whose parent company was Bussing (another West German company). The Ratel engines were also built under licence from MAN.

Yes, we built these vehicles, including the engines, armament, and all the associated parts in RSA. But we have the Germans to thank for the design of those parts.

Moroccan gendarmerie. As I've mentioned on a previous occasion, these vehicles were recently upgraded with new sights and ranging systems. They are probably some of the most sophisticated AML-90s of their era in service anywhere today.

ActivateKruger:
This the IAI Nesherof the Argentine Air Force, it's a Mirage 5 convention. I didn't know until tonight that the SAAF received 5 of them from the Israelis that were converted into Cheetahs - interesting, but what's more interesting is that Paramount Group has sourced Mirage 5s which were originally designed for the Israelis.

On a related note, I believe only two countries currently operate the Mirage 5: Pakistan and Gabon.

Every time another country retires its Mirage 5 fleet or some company offers a few for sale on the open market, Pakistan quickly snaps them up because they have the largest fleet in the world and badly need parts for them.

Gabon might want the Paramount Mirages for the same reason, they have eleven but ten of those are unserviceable.

When I worked in Jeddah I had a Yank colleague who said the Neshers were just Mirage 5s delivered in kit form to Israel. He said the first batch were assembled by foreign technicians (mostly British and American, including himself) on short term contract, who then trained Israeli technicians to take their place and assemble the rest. He dismissed the notion that the Israelis built their Neshers from scratch as being a propaganda exercise, and compared it to the way our politicians claimed the Cheetahs were a 100% "home grown" design when they were first unveiled.

Zambian BRDMs.

More from Gabon. Note the roundels.

Moroccan troops stage desert exercises in 1976.