What the 2012 Defence Review envisages for the SANDF is the military equivalent of retooling and customising a Brabant from the 1960s to turn it into a Ferrari.

If the Brabant in question is the SANDF in 2012 you might go further.

Think of the East German skedonk as having a cracked cylinder head and a seized engine for starters.

In a 423 page report released this week the 14 person strong Defence Review Committee - appointed by Defence and Military Veterans Minister Lindiwe Sisulu in July 2011 - paints a picture of the South African military as woefully underequipped, thoroughly dysfunctional, and misguided in its priorities.

In the current frame:

*       The South African Army continues to use, as its prime attack force, tanks that first came into service more than half a century ago, in the 1950s.

*       More than a decade after the signing of purchase orders for more than 20 Gripen Saab fighter aircraft, the SA Air Force still does not have enough trained pilots to fly them and at current budgetary levels can afford only 260 flight hours per year. This is enough to satisfy Nato flying-time requirements of 240 hours for one single pilot , with a total of 20 hours left over for the other 25 aircraft.

*       The Gripen Saabs were also bought without weapons systems, and though some have been fitted with missiles on an ad hoc basis, most remain useless in possible conflict situations.

*       The SANDF has less than 30 percent of its budget left over for operational purposes - and only 10% for capital costs like acquiring new materiel - after paying out nearly 60% on salaries.

*       By mid 2011 the SA Navy had to suspend all involvement in international manoeuvres after the coffers ran dry.

*       Operational funding for continental peacekeeping missions has been so inadequate that, according to defence insiders, on occasion, money could not be found to return military vehicles to South Africa at the end of tours of duty.

*       Despite the huge salary bill - a disproportionate part of which goes to non-combatant and often supernumerary staff as the SANDF grows increasingly embroiled in labour disputes - the military has, on several occasions had difficulty even mustering personnel for mandated peacekeeping missions.

The above is not even to mention some of the more dramatic cockups that have haunted the SANDF and raised questions over competence levels in recent years - crashing a submarine; buying, at enormous expense, batteries for the undersea vessels with design fault so serious they constituted a safety threat; or destroying the command and control system of another submarine by plugging the wrong wire into the wrong socket.

The Committee, first convened in July 2011, was chaired by FW De Klerk-era Defence Minister, Roelf Meyer, later prominent in Codesa and the drafting of South Africa's democratic constitution, with Umkhonto we Sizwe stalwart and North West Premier Thandi Modise serving as deputy. The brains trust included senior representatives from each of the military component services along with Jane's Defence weekly correspondent Helmoed Heitmann, and flamboyant former Defence Portfolio Committee chair Tony Yengeni.

Against this backdrop, the Committee started from the beginning - with the SANDF's mandate as enshrined in the South African Constitution.

Key roles assigned to the military as the "sole legitimate military force" in the country include: "the protection and defence of the Republic; its sovereignty, territorial integrity, national interests and people", as articulated by Minister Sisulu at a press briefing in Pretoria on Thursday this week.

But this is only half the story. The other half lies arises from an analysis of what the SANDF will expectably be called upon to do in the current continental and geo-political context and in the coming thirty years - the time frame assigned for the Committee's consideration.

And what becomes clear is the SANDF - underwritten by a 1998 Defence Review Process thoroughly compromised by the murky politics of procurement in government's notorious arms deal, and focusing more on the difficulties of integrating former antagonists from the old SADF and the liberation armies into a single fighting force, than on visionary geo-politics - will need a serious overhaul at every level to meet the challenges identified.

Those highlighted include:

*        Peacekeeping.

An intensifying focus on South Africa's role as a major regional player in the African continent. While the 1998 Defence Review - at the start of South Africa's engagement in peacekeeping in Burundi - made provision for the deployment of 1000 soldiers, in the intervening period the country has become embroiled in eight conflict situations - including seemingly intractable struggles in Somalia, Sudan and the Great Lakes region.

*       Border control.

With an air border of 7660 kilometres, a coastline 3924km long, and land borders of 4471 km, South Africa remains vulnerable to not only conventional attack (acknowledged as a remote possibility) but also to more real and insidious threats like illegal immigration, smuggling and organized criminal activity, as well as illegal weapons transfers.

*        Cyberwarfare.

With warfare growing increasingly high tech, the report identifies a need for proactive engagement with defensive technologies to secure computerized command and control systems from the possibility of hacking to render them useless. Balanced against this, the review prioritises the investing in the development and acquisition of cutting-edge "smart weapons" like computerized attack drone missiles.

*       Chemical and Biological Warfare.

Against the backdrop of non-state actors like terrorist groupings having increasing access to chemical and biological agents, the report argues that defensive measures need urgently to be explored and developed if the SANDF's mandate to protect South Africans is to be fulfilled.

*       The protection of National Key Points.

The rider here, as articulated in the report, is that in some cases such key points fall outside of the borders of South Africa - for instance water sources beyond the borders of South Africa, as well as the Mozambique Channel, which is highlighted as being crucial to South Africa's status as a pre-eminently sea-trading economy, and increasingly under threat from piracy.

*       The rationalization of weapons procurement and defence manufacturing.

Against the backdrop of a National Conventional Arms Control Committee that has all but ceased to function in recent years, the Defence Review proposes that arms control be made the responsibility of a multi-party parliamentary committee rather than the ministerial cluster of government currently tasked with regulating the sale and transfer of matriel in South Africa. The report also proposes that defence manufacturing by the state owned Denel as well as private-sector manufacturers should be made more responsive to the actual needs of the SANDF, and targeted to enhance its capacities. Responding to the Review, DA Shadow Minister on Defence David Maynier said he welcomed Minister Sisulu's moves to restructure and reporioritise the defence sector, but expressed concern at the absence of detailed budgeting in the document produced by the Committee.

"Without a detailed and budgeted force design, the Review is more a green paper than a usuable document, and unless there is a breakdown of how much it is going to cost, the exercise is in danger of moving into the zone of fantasy" Maynier said.

Styled as a Consultative Draft, the Committee's report will be available for discussion and fine-tuning ahead of the Defence budget vote in May this year.

If the wish list mapped out in the 2012 Defence Review is to be realised, the bill would probably dwarf the estimated R67 billion that the South African government's strategic procurement package will cost the taxpayer by the end of the decade.

But that, the review Committee argues, is just what it will cost to get the SANDF optimally functional. How it is going to paid for, the Committee does not say, leaving it to Cabinet to plot the way forward.

Among the materiel envisaged for acquisition is a warship or "pocket aircraft carrier" capable of launching helicopters and vertical take-off jets. Alleged plans to buy such a vessel under the codename "Project Millennium" were reported in the Citizen newspaper in January this year, but denied by Defence Minister Lindiwe Sisulu, who described the project as "news to me".

In the defence Review however the absence of such a resource in the business of securing the strategically crucial Mozambique Channel as well as continuing anti-piracy operations off the east coast of Africa, is highlighted as an issue to be addressed in rendering the South African military more effective and more "agile".

A single warship with such capabilities would cost at lease twice as much as the is estimated to cost between three and four times the R4 billion spent on the Navy's four Corvettes.

Also high up on the shopping list is a batch of battle tanks to replace the brigade of superannuated Olifant tanks currently in service. Originally part of an SA Army order included in the arms deal of the late 1990s - which along with over 100 such vehicles, also included air defence systems and around 150 other armoured vehicles - the tanks purchase was, in the event, deferred in favour of Air Force and Navy materiel. This has left the Army relying on main battle equipment which, though refurbished, dates back to the 1950s.

So too, the Army has still to make do with a fleet of Samil heavy armoured trucks that are barely more contemporary, and equally in need of upgrading - as highlighted in the Defence Review.

Attention is also drawn to the fact that in the current situation, the Air Force does not have the capacity to for in flight refuelling of its fighter planes - dramatically reducing their potential effectiveness in operations beyond the borders of South Africa.

With the implosion of the Airbus A400 M joint venture in 2010 - where South Africa pulled out of a partnership with the European manufacturer and cancelled orders for the aircraft, the SANDF continues to face a crisis on the air transportation front. With only a superannuated Hercules fleet, anyway not equal to the demands of peacekeeping operations in foreign lands, to call up, the military is forced at the present time to rely on private contractors.

If the notional bill is getting scary, it gets worse. The Air Force's Gripen Saabs were bought for R10 billion plus without the weaponry that would render them militarily effective, and while at least two were subsequently armed with air-to-air missiles ahead of the 2010 Football world Cup, the majority still lack firepower - and the manufacturers have threatened to void warranties if they are fitted out with locally manufactured missiles or guns.

Current budgets will simply not stretch far enough to render the strike aircraft more than decorative items to be used in fly past parades.

But perhaps the most striking index is to be gleaned from a discussion of Force Design in the Committee's report. Here the optimal structure for the functioning of the SA Army in a conflict situation is outlined as a synergy of three divisions - one Mechanised, the second Motorised and the third designated as a Contingency Brigade. The idea is that the first will deploy the heavy equipment - tanks and mechanised infantry - the second backing up the first in armoured cars and mechanised infantry formations, and the third providing rapidly deployable air- borne and sea-landed troops to be sent in to mop up.

In the current frame however, the Review Committee acknowledges the remoteness of such classic military force design and suggests that in the short term only the Motorised Division be prioritised.