자금 부족, 냉소적 시선 등으로 붕괴 위기인 남아공군

[위종민]

남아공군이 자금 부족과 과도한 확장으로 붕괴 위기에 처해 있다고 지적하는 뉴스들입니다. 우리가 곤경에 처하지 않은 이유는, 아무도 우리를 공격하지 않았기 때문이며 남아공 해군은 해역을 순찰할 수도 없고 밀수를 막을 수도 없고, 모잠비크나 콩고민주공화국에 배치된 육군도 병력이 모자란다고. 

남아공 공군의 현재 연간 예산은 70억 랜드인데, 구매력 대비로 비교시 1993년과 동일한 구매력을 확보하려면 300억 랜드가 필요하다고 합니다. 남아공 국방예산 총액은 23/24 회계년도에 511억 랜드인데 이는 조정된 예산에서 5억 랜드가 순감소했다고 하네요. 

https://www.defenceweb.co.za/editors-pick/underfunded-sandf-will-implode-sooner-or-later/

Underfunded SANDF will implode ‘sooner or later’

Guy Martin -

25th Aug 2023

2632

SANDF soldiers training ahead of deployment to the DRC.

Defence experts have warned that due to the decline of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), South Africa would be defenceless if attacked, with analyst Helmoed Heitman warning the military will “implode sooner or later” as for the past two decades, the defence force has been underfunded and overstretched, leaving it short of capabilities.

This neglect means there has not been enough money for maintaining equipment or training properly, as sailors don’t have enough time at sea or pilots enough time in the air. “There’s no money to close critical capability gaps like maritime patrol and airlift. We are short of capabilities; we are not able to properly maintain what we have. The wheels will come off sooner or later. The people in the machine work minor miracles every day but they can’t do that forever without the right funding,” Heitman said.

“If any big player came to attack us, we would not be able to do anything,” Heitman stated. “The only reason we are not in trouble is because no one is attacking us. In the state of our navy, we cannot patrol our waters and we can’t prevent smuggling.” Nevertheless, small, fragile states like Eswatini, Lesotho, and Zimbabwe pose challenges, as does terrorism across the border in Mozambique.

He added that, “the Army does not have enough troops to go everywhere. It’s got troops in Mozambique, in the DRC, plus they do work on the border. Then every now and then they get called out to do work locally. They just don’t have enough bodies to do the work.”

Another result of the neglect of the SANDF is that this affects the defence industry. It is hampered by few orders from the SANDF, an onerous export control system, and lack of government support – Heitman pointed out that government is not the chief salesman for the defence industry, unlike many other nations. The SANDF also doesn’t buy and endorse enough locally made equipment.

“If we implemented the Defence Review of 2015 we would be building up towards 100 000 or so jobs in the defence industry, not 12 000 [at present]. At one time it was 300 000.” Heitman added that employing Cubans to fix SANDF equipment is not helping, as Denel has had to lay off staff because work is going to Cuban technicians.

His comments come in the wake of Defence and Military Veterans Minister Thandi Modise stating in a written parliamentary reply that, “I am on record as having said the defence force is becoming progressively more unsustainable in terms of the declining defence baseline allocation and we have now reached the point where the Republic must decide on the kind of defence force it wants and can afford”.

Based on the actual number of feet on the ground, the SANDF is underfunded by approximately R2.6 billion, according to Modise, who told Parliament in May that “we are definitely, terribly underfunded due to the cost of employments,” with commitments in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, and internally.

The Department of Defence received a total budget allocation of R51.1 billion for the 2023/24 financial year, a net decrease of about R500 million from the previous adjusted budget, and is now facing a 10% spending cut on top of this. Due to the underfunding of the Compensation of Employees (COE) allocation, the department will most likely incur unauthorised expenditure of approximately R3 billion in the 2022/23 financial year.

Darren Olivier, Director at African Defence Review, said that forecasts of imminent implosion are “what all of us covering the SANDF have warned for years would be the consequence of endless budget cuts and overstretching the SANDF for more missions regardless. The force remains capable in many areas but it’s running on empty with critical low stocks of spares and ammo.

“The correct answer to this type of story isn’t to throw our hands up in despair and insist nothing can be done. This is all, still, very fixable. It just requires the right political will, public support, and a match between the funding we provide and the missions we demand.

“If we’re not willing or able to fund the SANDF for its full size and capabilities, to be able to assist the police, conduct search and rescue and disaster response, and to fight insurgencies in neighbouring countries, then we should accept it cannot and should not do those things,” Olivier stated.

Aviation expert Dean Wingrin commented that decades of inadequate budgets and lack of political support for the military and the defence industry has led to the decline of the SANDF. “It’s not something that can be fixed overnight. Even with a massive budget increase, it will take a decade or more to rectify. This should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the SANDF and its budget vs mandate. Whilst the SANDF (like the previous SADF) was never intended to fight a ‘super power,’ it should be capable of succeeding against a near peer such as that found in Africa.”

National Treasury has allocated R1.4 billion to refit the Navy’s frigates and submarines and R1 billion to make six C-130BZ Hercules transports airworthy again as some efforts are made to recapacitate the SANDF. It has also allocated R700 million for technology for border protection, and although this will go some way towards recapacitating the SANDF, to rejuvenate and re-equip the SANDF to make it a truly effective force would cost R41 billion over 25 years.

https://www.saairforce.co.za/news-and-events/1826/give-the-saaf-a-break

The South African Air Force

Give the SAAF a break!

Date: 25 August 2023

By Daren Olivier

On Misinformation Patience and Grace

It has become a running joke that the general public, and much of the media, will always assume the worst of the South African Air Force (SAAF), and of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) as a whole. “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t” is a view commonly expressed in the force, along with a bemused questioning of whether anything they do will be sufficient to earn the public’s approval.

Photos and videos of entirely routine training activities are frequently taken out of context and reinterpreted in the most uncharitable, cynical, and negative ways. Accidents, which are an unfortunate reality in any air force, are elevated to apparently catastrophic evidence of an inability to operate safely. In other cases, claims about what’s happening are invented out of thin air, yet always with an underlying message of incompetence and somehow still widely believed.

All too often, all of this is also accompanied by some level of racism by dinosaurs who have never let go of their prejudices, though that is by no means the only factor.

Whether the ‘Mabena’ meme, low-wit jokes about the SAAF running out of fuel or planes being stolen, or worse the outright mockery of air crew involved in accidents, much of the public and a fair portion of the media have allowed themselves to adopt a cruel and twisted cynicism, one devoid of empathy or common humanity.

When a military helicopter crashes in much of the world, for instance, the general reaction is one of sombre sadness and serious toned-down reporting. In South Africa it’s all too often a weird form of glee from the public, a sick and twisted revelling in bad news beyond what’s justified, fed all too often by sensationalist reporting in the media.

Proposals for the acquisition of desperately needed new transport aircraft or helicopters are broadly condemned as a waste of money and have little public support, even though each time there’s a disaster the question becomes why the SAAF wasn’t doing more.

How did we get here? When did we decide that our justified anger at the mismanagement of our country should be redirected at the soldiers, air and ground crew, sailors, medics, civil servants, and others who staff our key institutions like the SANDF, and that they’re undeserving of understanding, respect, or empathy?

This is not to say, of course, that the SAAF and SANDF should be above criticism, or that they don’t have their fair share of stupid and condemnable actions. There have after all been plenty of mistakes, too many instances of corruption, and much poor decision-making that are all worth strongly criticising the senior leadership for. We should always hold these institutions up to the highest level of standards and expectations, and when criticism is due we should not hold back. That’s necessary if we’re to have accountability.

But the extent of the general public and media’s cynicism has tipped too far in the opposite direction. It continually hurts the morale of those in the SAAF and SANDF who are doing their best under trying circumstances and it creates an environment where successes can’t be recognised and encouraged.

That’s unhealthy for the SAAF, harmful for civil-military relations in general, and harmful for the country over the long run.

It’s time for a serious rethink of the SAAF and SANDF’s role in society and of the way each of the public, the SANDF, and the media view each other.

First, it’s time for some pragmatism about what’s actually possible for a force with the level of funding the SAAF receives. The days of the huge defence budgets of the 1980s are long gone and weren’t sustainable or affordable back then either, so any comparisons with the SAAF of that era in terms of operating tempo, number of aircraft and flying hours are as nonsensical as other wartime to peacetime comparisons.

Today’s SAAF receives just R7 billion or so a year, which may seem like a large amount but is substantially lower in real terms than it was in the early 1990s. In fact, when adjusting for both the rate of inflation and exchange rate changes, the current SAAF budget should probably be around R30 billion to achieve the same buying power as the SAAF’s budget in 1993. And that was already a more than 50% cut from the SAAF’s budget in 1991/1992, itself a cut from 1989/1990.

The current level of funding has been too low for too long to sustain many capabilities, and without an urgent intervention entire fleets and types will have to be retired. It’s really important for the public and media to have a realistic understanding of not only what the current force can do, but what would be reasonably possible with a more suitable level of spending. It will never get back to the same level as the 1980s, and if we allow people to believe that’s the point of comparison then even outsized success will be misinterpreted as failure.

This doesn’t mean accepting poor performance, being happy with mediocrity, or accepting a hollowed out force. On the contrary, it’s only by having an accurate understanding of what the current situation is and what’s possible, that you can hold the government properly accountable for long enough to force real change.

Informed and focused criticism will always beat angry and misdirected cynicism.

Second, the SAAF, and SANDF as a whole, must understand that they need, not only the support of the public and the media, but they need to constantly educate them so that they understand what the force does, and how it does it. So that they become immune to misinformation about the force, are more aware of what it can do, and what it can’t do, and why. And most importantly, so that they come to trust in the SAAF as an organisation.

That’s going to require a complete change in the way the force treats the public and media, moving from a stance of secret-by-default and over-classifying everything to one that’s painfully and awkwardly open and transparent. It will mean letting the public and media see not just the carefully prepared and stage-managed face shown at air shows or in official PR material, but also the ugly side. The decay, the painful realities, and the real face of a force struggling to keep going despite a ludicrously underfunded budget.

It will also mean being far more proactive in responding to viral social media misinformation or misunderstandings, and in publishing many more stories, photos, and videos of the force doing its daily work such as helicopter, transport, or fighter aircraft flights to get the public used to what the force does on a regular basis.

Third, it’s going to require enough of us being willing to self-reflect on our prejudices, lost empathy, and cynicism, and then committing to be more empathetic, informed, understanding, patient, and respectful toward our armed forces personnel in future.

While not all of those in the SAAF and SANDF are deserving of it, there are so many who break their backs and burn themselves out trying to keep things running smoothly despite all the problems. Every time we call on the SAAF, whether for disaster response, or search and rescue, or anything else, those personnel move heaven and earth to provide the air crew, aircraft, and other resources needed to get the job done.

If we want those types of people to stay in the force and feel rewarded and appreciated, then we as the public need to start recognising them for it.

Republished with permission of SA Flyer/FlightCom.

[백선호]

남아프리카는 나라 전체가 맛이 가고 있다고 하네요.

https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2023/05/22/business-leaders-fear-that-south-africa-risks-becoming-a-failed-state

[위종민]

아프리카 국방 관련 뉴스만 찾아봐도 나라 상태가 삐리하다는 게 느껴지더라구요.

[위종민]

발전용량 부족으로 제한송전을 실시하는데, 2022년엔 이 때문에 GDP 성장률의 5%를 까먹고 2023년 중반에 이미 2022년 정전 횟수를 뛰어넘었다고 합니다.

아파르트헤이트 끝내면서 그 동안 전력공급이 안 됐었던 흑인지역에 전력을 공급해야 하니 발전소를 건설해야 했지만 대책없이 2004년까지 발전소 건설을 불허했고 2007년부터 제한송전을 시작했다고 합니다. 2007년부터 짓기 시작한 두 발전소는 공기 지연과 예산초과에 시달리면서 한 곳은 아직도 건설중이고, 한 곳은 2019년 완공됐지만 관리실패로 인한 폭발사고로 가동이 중단됐다고 하네요.

나라가 망해간다는 게 저런 거구나 싶습니다. ( https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/south-africas-power-failures-are-a-symptom-of-a-deeper-disease/ )