Final Submarine Handed to SA Navy [Sapa, 2008-01-31]

Publication: Sapa Issued: Pretoria Date: 2008-01-31 Reporter: Sapa

Final Submarine Handed to SA Navy

Publication	Sapa BC-DEFENCE-SUBMARINE
Issued	Pretoria
Reporter	Sapa
Date	2008-01-31

The third and last of the SA Navy's new submarines was handed over in Kiel, Germany on Thursday.

The SAS Queen Modjadji was handed to the SA Navy crew after it successfully underwent sea trials of the German coast, ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems said in statement.

The boat is expected to leave for South Africa on April 2 and is due to arrive in Simonstown on May 22.

There the submarine will be united with her two sister ships the SAS Manthatisi and SAS Charlotte Maxeke, that have already been taken into service by the SA Navy.

The fleet of three submarines were bought as part of South Africa's multi-billion rand strategic arms acquisition programme.

The submarine was the last piece of equipment that was acquired as part of the acquisition programme for the SA Navy.

The Navy also received four new patrol frigates as part of the package, as well as four Super Linx (sic - Lynx) *1 helicopters to be operated by the SA Air Force from the ships.

With acknowledgements to Sapa.

*1 Actually, this is not true.

The maritime helicopters were included in the original package approved by Cabinet in 1998, but were excluded from the contracts signed in 1999 after Thomson-CSF increased the price for the combat suite from R1,9 billion to R2,6 billion and the maritime helicopters no longer fitted into the budget.

But no matter the DOD sneaked in the maritime helicopters into another deal concluded a number of years later.

This is the way our Government works, smoke, mirrors, stealth, chicanery and simple downright dishonesty.

At present our navy does not have crew for Boat No.3 and its going to be very interesting to see how they man, operate and support four frigates and three submarines.

Maybe they can make excellent use of them by tying them alongside and grid tying their diesel generators onto Eskom's power grid and selling a few megaWatts of electrical power back to the country.

It'll be an interesting trick converting the 400 Hz ship power to 50 Hz Eskom power.

But if Cahora Bassa's 500 000 Volt DC can be converted to Eskom's 66 000 Volt AC, anything must be possible.

Where there's a will, there's a way.