Cape Town State-owned arms manufacturer Denel
has completed the requirements for the certification of the
Rooivalk attack helicopter but would require a further cash
injection by the Department of Defence to make it fully
operational, CEO Talib Sadiq said yesterday.
The South African Air Force has 11 helicopters which still
have to be fully developed at a cost to Denel of about
R170m, and require state funding for their development,
operational and servicing costs.
Defence Minister Lindiwe Sisulu came to the
rescue of the beleaguered helicopter when she decided SA
still needed the Rooivalk, which has absorbed R8bn of
taxpayers’ money since the early 1990s .
Otto Schür, Denel’s group executive: technical, was reported
to have said recently that five baseline Rooivalk
helicopters would be handed over for operational duties to
the South African Air Force’s 16 Squadron next year, with
the other six being completed and ready for deployment soon
afterwards.
Mr Sadiq stressed in a briefing to Parliament’s public
enterprises committee that Denel’s turnaround strategy had
been successful apart from Denel Saab Aerostructures (DSA),
which would be restructured and downsized in the year ahead.
Last year, Denel produced a net profit of R82m excluding DSA,
which suffered a loss of R328m.
While the group’s total current order book of about R28bn
was strong and the order cover (signed orders as a
percentage of budgeted revenue) for in-year orders was 77%,
the future multiyear order book, at 20%, was very low, Mr
Sadiq said.With acknowledgements to
Linda Ensor and Business
Day.
12 combat support
helicopters for R8 billion (more like R12 billion all taken
at current values), plus crashing one of them means a cost
of over a R1 billion each.
And the war ended in 1989, that's 21 years ago.
Quite who thought we needed to develop and deploy our own
combat support helicopter and not just lash a couple of ZT-3
anti-tank missiles to the underside of an Oryx helicopter
plus a 20 mm cannon out the side door (a la Puff the Magic
Dragon), has dissolved into the mists of time.
But to now go the rest of the way for R170 million is a
modest cheese.