₦airaland Forum

ActivateKruger:
You should keep in mind that the Redcat still fires 76/105mm. It can accompany the Badger for fire support.

If you're replacing over a 1000 Ratels with a few hundred Badgers then you gotta make compromise on other things and keep what you need and that's the 30mm and ATGM because you can substitute everything else with what you already have.

Below, the Rooikat providing fire support to the Motorised.

I completely agree the lack of a dedicated assault gun/infantry support variant is not the most pressing concern for the Badger fleet since the Rooikat can be used in that role.

However, according to my understanding that's not the Rooikat's job. It is supposed to provide reconnaissance and undertake flanking actions as needed, not spend all its time backing up the Badgers and infantry.

The Rooikat was not designed as a replacement for the Ratel-90's role and shouldn't be regarded as such.

Incidentally, you mentioned substituting what we already have...that shouldn't be an issue if one puts the existing 90mm turret on the Badger.

61mech:
The 90mm had a canister round that was devastating against infantry.
You need a mix of 20-30mm and 76-90-105mm for a good fire belt shoot.
In my opinion the SANDF made a mistake in selecting the 30mm for the fire support Badger. They should have used the old 90mm with 2x igwe's in that turret. They are saying the 60mm can be elevated low for that job, but it doesn't always occupy the battlespace where that's needed.

I'd generally agree with this sentiment.

The Brazilians created a pretty good turret which mated a 90mm gun to an ATGM launcher and I wished that was the way the Badger would go.

The 60mm gun-mortar is useless against dug in troops, buildings, static fortifications, and other "hard targets" which is why a large calibre weapons system capable of fulfilling the assault gun type role would be more useful.

However, the mortar can indeed be used in that role if it were up-gunned and capable of firing HEAT ammunition like the LAV-M with the British 120mm mortar by Delco and Royal Ordnance. This thing has been used by the Saudis in Yemen and capable of flattening structures, older tanks, and infantry alike. It's both an assault gun and a mortar.

Actually I thought that Denel would go for something like that if they really wanted a multipurpose mortar for the Badger, it really surprised me when I heard they were sticking with a longer barrelled 60mm.

Pictures of the Brazilian turret (first two) and the LAV-M mortar combination (second two) below:

giles14:
waste ? I don't think so.

am not even sure most of them are still operational.

They can be made operational.

Look at how quickly the Nigerian Army's AML-60s resurfaced with new coats of paint when they were needed.

There is nothing to stop them from bringing the ERC 90 Lynxes, EE-9 Cascavels, and AML-90s out of storage and reactivating them.

Even if the fleet has suffered some attrition, Nigeria bought such large numbers of all three types of vehicle it's unthinkable that all of them are too far gone to be rescued from the depots.

Fidha254:
This turkish company has some dope CAD engineers .. I don't care if it even moves I want this in my backyard, just to look at it every morning

Reminds me of the Fenneck, only even better looking.

MikeCZA:
Interestingly is that when an attack was imminent units on the ground would get "victory" messages.


Some of the artillery guys' air defence was provided(SAMs) by UNITA.

Yes and FAPLA absolutely feared the Stingers. But they were unevenly distributed and UNITA was bloody awful shots. Fred Bridgland wrote that Recces had to be on hand to help them acquire their targets and operate the missiles, otherwise they missed more often than not.

The artillery guys always had first priority for air defence since the MiGs made them their #1 target. I think starting in Op Protea each battery had an attached troop from 10 AA Regiment with Ystervarks.

Other than that the only other piece of air defence equipment used in Angola was the Cactus, but it was not well suited to bundu bashing and simply could not keep up with vehicles like the Ratel or even the Buffel. Its use was very limited accordingly.

Henry240:
Out of curiosity, are you a former SADF soldier?

No I am not. I hope I didn't mistakenly convey that impression to you.

patches689:
Because you cant respond... you have no response

That's an interesting photo of a FAPLA Hind.

According to one Soviet advisor's account during the Angolan war FAPLA preferred using Mi-17 Hips with unguided rockets in lieu of the Hind, despite the fact they weren't nearly as effective. The reason was because the Hinds were considered so valuable they were all stored on major air bases in central locations like Luanda. If they were needed for an op, they would fly in, do their thing, then fly back to their base.

This meant that district commanders never had regular and direct access to the Hinds, so of course they weren't utilised to the full extent of their capabilities. If they had, I have a feeling ops like Askari and Moduler would have been a hell of a lot more difficult. A squadron of Hinds in competent hands would've been easily capable of taking out a column of Ratels, especially given the shortage of man portable SAMs at the time, and disappear before anything like an Impala or a Mirage could be called in to counter them.

On the other hand, the Hinds were expensive and considered much more difficult to replace than a Hip, so given the inexperience of many FAPLA district commanders it's possible the senior Air Force commanders were unwilling to risk placing them in their hands. I do not agree with this logic but can understand the rationale.

It's also possible that by confining the Hinds to a few very well-protected bases the risk of sabotage and damage due to UNITA raids was mitigated.

Angolan Air Force Hinds:

Pantser okes and mounted infantry having bad days. Not at all funny at the time no doubt, but they make for good stories later.

The first one reminds me of a funny story that has been retold many times and undergone many national varieties. I think versions have been told in the Russian and US armies before.

So this lucky loot gets the word that he's going to be a new father. The dad to be decides to celebrate in typical army style by going fishing: takes a few of his men, a couple crates of ice cold shumbas, an APC, and they set off into the bush.

Soon they reach an idyllic lake.

Fishing in this context of course mostly means knocking back a few beers in good company. I suppose there was actual fishing involved, if you count throwing grenades into the lake.

After a few too many, one of the sharper sticks in the bundle gets the bright idea to fish in the middle of the lake. This will make things invariably more productive and interesting. Everybody agrees and they plunge the APC into the lake with gusto.

Unfortunately in all this excitement someone has forgotten to close all those lovely little hatches and ports so the vehicle almost immediately sinks. Whoops!

Nobody drowns, which is a miracle in itself, but now our heroes have to recover the APC. A distinctly unimpressed salvage team is summoned. These okes put on their scuba gear, and go underwater to see what's what.

When they surface, the team leader asks the loot what the serial number of his APC is. Naturally he is dumbfounded.

"The serial number? What? Why?"

"Because there are four sunken APCs in this lake!"

Moroccan AML-20. Interestingly this was the most heavily armoured turret ever fitted on the AML vehicle to date.

When they ordered these the Moroccan Army specified they wanted an armour thickness of at least 20mm on the turret face. The heaviest armour plate used on any AML up until that point was only 16mm!

jakeporeshenko:
Nigerian AFSF receiving airborne training

Those yellow helmets in the first photo look just like Russian armoured vehicle crew helmets, interesting.

Airborne armoured capability is something more African countries should invest in. The Russians had it right with the BMD.

EE-9 Cascavels of the FARDC.

To this day it is a mystery where the Congolese acquired these, or how many they have. The vehicles are a mix of Cascavel Mk 1 and Mk 2s and were not operated by the old Zairean armed forces.

Some sources say these were donated by Libya or Zimbabwe. However, I have heard a rumour which states they were actually purchased from Israel in the mid 2000s sometime, supposedly from the same company that upgraded the AML-90s for Kenya.

Nobody really knows. They have never been sighted on operations, only in FARDC parades and even then one or two at a time.

frumentius:
There you go Hrmnn .

Always nice to see a decent Ferret on the road.

Eland-60 of the Ivory Coast gendarmerie.

You can tell it is an Eland by the Dunlop tyres, number of lug nuts on the wheels and the reel located towards the rear of the turret.

The mortar, co-axial MG, and the turret pintle mount have all been removed.

Panhard ERC 90 Sagaie of Gabon during an amphibious landing exercise.

Henry240:
Repost

Nigerian army AML

Thanks for posting this.

It really is great to see these things in action again.

patches689:
Planes, missiles blah blah

Everyone needs to drop what they are doing and get this thing back into the loop.

Gimme a low pressure 90mm or a 30mm that can fire telescoping rounds or a 20mm with a recon mast and make it cheaper than the Panhard CRAB

Gimme ATGM's or MANPADS or CBRN or recon sensors, and make it cheaper than the Fennec.

We will sell them by the boatload over the next 30 years.

I remember when they first restored this Mechem MC-90 at Bloemfontein hey. It's only been a few years.

Does anybody remember when it was on static display outside the Armour Museum and wasn't serviceable? I remember seeing it back in '06 or '07. Ag what a pitiful sight that was. This one of a kind vehicle sitting out there looking miserable and slowly wasting away.

It had been trialled by the SANDF at that point and then taken around to a few international defence expos then relegated to Bloemy to rust with all the rest of the defence force rejects.

I understand "Oom Frik" - the name you see on the side of the vehicle - wanted it restored and Denel did this for him in gratitude for something. There was a very interesting article in the Armoured Corps mag about it. I remember thinking somebody at Denel does have a heart after all, was surprised that it was the original manufacturer (as opposed to the museum itself) which undertook the restoration, but they got it running again.

The MC-90 was also moved indoors at the Armour Museum after that.

Unfortunately, the second prototype, a mortar carrier, remains unrestored and in rather shabby condition. Here's hoping that someday they will get it looking nicer again, too:

GreenandGold:
No one is actually sure about that.. According to some alleged engineer who worked there, the project was initiated a big double engine because South Africa didn't have access to powerful engines to produce an agile single engine craft.

Then they spent too much time on how it should look like, the avionics and forth. Apparently the Israelis stalled the whole process because they wanted to work a bit longer (the pay and the beer was good). Then later came the French team who had worked on a botched Saudi funded prototype also changing the design to resemble the French mirage.

Then more French arrived with Rafale blueprints. Before everyone knew it, the Cubans were out of Angola the Soviet Union went broke and South Africa was talking all-inclusive elections.

The Saudi prototype you mention wasn't exactly botched. It was the very successful Mirage 4000, which was an excellent strike fighter and superior in every way to the Mirage 2000 and in some respects the Rafale as well.

For comparison, it had an operating range over three times that of the latest Mirage 2000-5.

It could also fly faster (Mach 2.2) and at much higher altitudes (service ceiling was 20,000m) than either the Rafale or the Mirage 2000.

The French rejected it because they already bought a ton of Mirage 2000s just a few years earlier, which had the added bonus of being cheaper and easier to launch off carriers. For a while the Saudis supported the programme but then picked the Tornado instead due to cost and more favourable terms offered by BAE (as well as some alleged kickbacks paid to members of the Saudi Royal Family).

So the Mirage 4000 died, but it was still one of the best all-around strike fighters ever designed during the Cold War.

The Mirage 4000 was a massive aircraft, probably the largest ever built using the delta winged Mirage design. It absolutely dwarfs the Mirage 2000 when they're photographed next to each other.

You'll note that a lot of the conjecture line drawings and sketches of the Atlas Carver bear an eerie resemblance to the Mirage 4000, and some of the supposed dimensions of the Carver are also the same.

Tunisian AML-90 during security operations against ISIL (Libyan branch).

EE-11 Urutu of Tunisia, with 90mm gun. Also known as the "Uruvel".

These were so popular that at one time the Americans wanted to buy them for the US Marine Corps. It combined the three things they wanted most: troop carrying capacity, amphibious capability, and a large fire support weapon.

The programme was canceled, some say because of the pressure of the American defence industry which didn't want such a lucrative contract going to Brazil.

In the end all the Uruvels produced were sold to Tunisia, where they remain in service today.

Burkinabe EE-9 Cascavel.

chkil0:
They captured it from the moroccan army during their war

Yes, thank you for pointing that out. At one point around half of Polisario's armoured vehicles were captured from Morocco.

Some more examples:

Panhard AML-90 in Western Sahara of the Polisario Front / Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

You'll notice the right tyre has a Hutchinson tread while the left one has a Dunlop tread and looks suspiciously similar to the same tyres on the Eland series.

That's because Polisario operates both the AML and the Eland vehicle types. They used a spare tyre from an Eland to replace one from the AML-90 in the picture.

Ratel-90 of Ghana

ActivateKruger:
90 percent? Where are you getting the stats from?

Hundreds of IFVs and APCs we field are made locally, we're almost self sufficient on land forces. The sea and air platforms don't even equate for 40 percent of the total platforms and they're also supplemented by locally built strategic defence sub-systems.

We may not win a pound-to-pound war against France, Britain and Germany BUT they can't defeat and occupy us, they'll need millions of soldiers to do that.

Ever read Vortex?

It takes the combined might of Cuba, Libya, the rest of Southern Africa, the US and the U.K. to militarily subdue the Saffers, and only then after enormous casualties.

Smashing novel.

KDF AML-60 in action in Somalia, with mortar in place.

Looks like a basket has been welded to the rear of the turret for external stowage.

Army of Gabon again.

To my knowledge the Gabonese do not currently operate any tanks, much like Cameroon all their armour is wheeled.

Pics below depict a WZ-523, EE-9 Cascavel, and some kind of Paramount MRAP (I'm guessing a Matador).

These lovely AML-90 Lynxes were recently modernised by a French company for an unknown client.

Not sure if the blue is the final coat of paint or just a primer. It would seem to indicate gendarmerie as opposed to armed forces vehicles.

Cannot recognise the licence plate, unfortunately. End user could be Morocco or Tunisia.

frumentius:
They no longer operate the An-72. On paper, they have 7 X An-74; 3 are operational. Plus 2 X C-212. And that's the totality of their medium lift.

Light lift:
1) 10 X An-12, of which 2 are operational;
2) 1 AN-26;
3) 7 X An-32, of which 3 are operational;

Heavy Lift:
9 X Il-76, of which 3 are operational. 3 are completely unserviceable, 2 have been cannibalised and they are considering having the remaining 1 overhauled.

When the war ended, maintenance fell away all across the Angolan military, even though the defence budget kept rising. An opaque defence procurement process, deliberately so designed to facilitate corruption.

One reason maintenance collapsed for the Angolan Armed Forces is because they depended on Cuban and Eastern Bloc technicians and logistical staff to do everything for them in the 1970s and 1980s instead of training enough of their own.

Therefore when all the Cubans and Europeans went home a lot of their equipment suddenly became unserviceable.

When Angola invaded Congo-Brazzaville, I remember reading newspaper accounts of how every time a truck or a tank or an APC broke down they'd just abandon it instead of trying to recover and repair the vehicle. Think of how much good equipment and money was wasted this way.

The lesson we can learn from Angola's example is that an African country should never be utterly dependent on the skills of foreign technicians to handle the maintenance of their hardware for them. Never use foreigners on a long term contract basis, hire them on short term contracts and have them train your own technical staff to do the same job.

This mistake has been made time and time again, especially where aircraft are concerned. Don't just train pilots and air crew, train mechanics too, they are just as important to the operation of the aircraft.

61mech:
Drivers would have been black too. By the time you're ready to deploy after doing section/platoon level coin, the drivers in your intake should be qualified. Driving a buffel is not that hard as long as you are aware of the body roll at certain speeds and don't panic.

Damn things nearly killed as many guys in accidents than it saved from mines. Horribly flawed vehicle. We once had one drive into a Pigshit dam on a farm. Guys were taking turns throwing up while we tried to dig it out... Charming evening that was!!
They should have just build a "shorty" Casspir on a unimog chassis from the start (which is basically what a Mamba is)

I heard they had a tendency to roll into corners. Supposedly it had to do with the top heavy nature of the design.

The Rhino and Bulldog were later developments on the Buffel which were much improved. By then the Mamba was entering service though so both were not introduced in large numbers.

ActivateKruger:
South Africans haven't used Beffels since the late 80s and they were mostly with the now defunct SWATF, 101 and 32 Batallion. These could have been refurbished and sold/donated.

There's a lot of surplus Buffels around RSA that have been converted into fire engines for some reason. I used to see one parked outside a fire service station in a little dorpie between Vanderbijl Park and Kroonstad.

Potch and Plettenberg Bay fire protection groups both have them, too.

Mystery Buffel recently spotted on the border between CAR and the Sudan. Photographer met the owners nearby, claimed they were South Africans and not regular military personnel.

My guess is that the Buffel is possibly operated by a Saffie security / demining company active in the CAR.

Panhard ERCs of Gabon

Henry240:
..

Interesting, but why is it the Niger AKs seem to be using NATO rounds?

I was told once that no NATO 7.62mm ammo is usable with the AK-47. Anybody else recall hearing something similar?