Chief of the South African Army, Lieutenant General Lawrence Khulekani Mbatha recently paid a visit to Reutech Communications where he was briefed on the new generation radios Reutech is delivering to the South African National Defence Force (SANDF).
He was hosted at Reutech Communications’ facilities at the end of May and given a presentation of the company’s 25 products by Atwell Mhlongo, Divisional Marketing Director (Africa).
Under Project Radiate, Reutech is delivering a range of radios to the SANDF. The new generation products consists of a family of software defined radios covering the military VHF, UHF and HF frequency ranges in the form of manpack, vehicle, base station (19” rack installation static) and personal role radios.
The family of radios ensures secure seamless interoperability across all arms of service, facilitating joint operations and are backwards compatibility to the SANDF’s legacy equipment, Reutech said. A new digital harness system, the Intra-platform Communications System (IPCS) allows secure digital data and voice communications on mobile platforms. The system is also supported by various software applications for network planning and battlefield management tools.
After the factory tour, Mbatha and his staff members paid a visit to, amongst others, the KZN Reserve Signals Unit and KZN Signals Unit where the new generation family of equipment was on display.
The current legacy equipment in the SANDF is analogue and based on outdated technology as the majority of systems have been in use in for generations and are well beyond their planned end-of-life date. Because of the advancement in technology, the legacy equipment can no longer be effectively supported due to the unavailability of replacement modules and components, Reutech said.
“The new generation radios provide a totally new capability to the SANDF. Its digital nature lends itself to seamless communications between the users, while its advanced mission customisation gives great flexibility in terms of structuring communications networks in accordance with the order of battle. It provides both indigenous unique encryption, new waveforms and anti-jamming capabilities.”
