The South African Navy's case for purchasing one or two "pocket aircraft carriers" to project its mari-time policing and African peace-keeping abilities over the horizon has been strengthened by Australia's purchase of two such vessels to patrol the southern oceans.

The vessels are in fact multi-role ships called landing platform docks (LPDs) because they can launch landing craft, helicopters and jets, and act as floating docks for small naval patrol vessels. They are seen as a key force component of the navies of the future.

Rear-Admiral Bernhard Teuteberg, the chief director of maritime strategy in the South African Navy (SAN), says, they are extremely versatile vessels which would be used by the navy, air force, army and military health service.

Last month, the Australian Navy purchased two 27 000-ton multi-role vessels from the Spanish firm Navantia, Europe's second-largest ship-builder.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard said the purchase at A$1,5-billion (R9,1-billion) each would enhance the country's humanitarian, as well as military, capabilities.

At last year's Africa Aerospace and Defence exhibition in Cape Town, Navantia vied with German shipbuilder ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems and French competitor Armaris for the SAN's attention.

ThyssenKrupp's case was the weakest as its 15 000-ton LPD design never left the drawing board. Yet the company's salesperson, Bernd Wölfer, argued the German option made for a more seamless navy because of ThyssenKrupp's partnership in the consortia which had already supplied SA with its four new frigates and three new submarines.

A stronger suit came from Armaris, however, which proved the worth of its 21 000-ton Mistral-class LPD by evacuating some 2 000 refugees from Lebanon during the war there last year.

Company naval adviser, retired rear-admiral Benoît de la Bigne, told me that the ship had been designed according to input by naval, air force and army officers with experience in West Africa.

That was important because the French Navy intended fielding one LPD in the Mediterranean and another in the Gulf of Guinea, De la Bigne said. A French admiral told me that in 2004 the French Navy looked to the SAN as its most important partner in patrolling the southern Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

In SA, the main role of an LPD would not be patrolling, however, but used to put peacekeeping troops ashore, evacuate refugees, and act as a floating hospital or command post for operations ashore, he said, and it would be protected by at least a frigate or a submarine.

With acknowledgements to Michael Schmidt and The Star.