By its own admission and not entirely its own fault, the SA Navy (SAN) fell woefully short of its planned time at sea in the 2023/24 financial year, with some improvement on the way according to the October Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS).
The latest Department of Defence (DoD) annual report has it the maritime service of the SA National Defence Force (SANDF) logged a paltry 2 641 hours at sea. Of these 1 680 are listed as force preparation hours with the balance of 961 being force employment time.
The hours logged make up a third of the planned target – 8 000 hours – set by Vice Admiral Monde Lobese’s service for the 2023/24 financial year.
On the maritime defence programme, the DoD annual report notes “most of the SAN vessels in commission were undergoing maintenance and repair during the reporting period. An added constraint was the unavailability of SAN vessels at the directed level of capability due to a lack of repair capacity at the Armscor Dockyard and related procurement challenges”.
This has been echoed by Lobese on, among others, the official SAN publication Navy News and a Simon’s Town medal parade. He is on record as saying he is prepared to “divorce” his service from the Armscor facility.
Aside from budget restrictions, he told the medal parade another factor severely limiting the SAN’s ability to get ships to sea, is the “non-performance of the Armscor Dockyard”.
“As Chief of the Navy, I have reached the end of my patience with their inability to repair the SAN ships. I have engaged the Chief Executive of Armscor on numerous opportunities to resolve this situation,” he said at the Martello sports ground parade.
“The SA Air Force and the SA Navy were detrimentally impacted by the lack of maintenance contracts for prime mission equipment not being in place, resulting in the unavailability of spares, which affected the number of hours flown/hours at sea, level of force preparation and accreditation of pilots,” the annual report read.
“Given the lead times required to finalise maintenance and repair of specific naval platforms designated to conduct long-range maritime patrols, and given that most naval platforms were undergoing maintenance and repair, no Op Copper long-range maritime patrols were conducted during the strategic period.”
The lack of performance at sea in the 2024/25 financial year was noted by Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana in last month’s MTBPS.
The MTBPS reads, in part: “Although the department [of defence] had conducted only one maritime coastal patrol by mid-year against an annual target of four, it remains on track to meet the target by the fourth quarter”.
“Similarly, only 3 290 hours were spent at sea by mid-year against an annual target of 12 000, with the expectation that this target will be met in the fourth quarter. Delays in the maintenance and repair of vessels resulted in only 1 721 hours at sea against an annual target of 8 000 hours. Performance is expected to improve in the second half of the year once the maintenance and repair work is completed.”
Respected defence analyst Helmoed Heitman has long been against the use of hours at sea as a performance indicator saying days is widely used internationally. Using his preference the SAN planned to spend 333 days at sea in 2023/24 but managing to log a third – 110 – of the target.
The major contributor to Godongwana’s expectation of increased time at sea will be the Valour Class frigate SAS Amatola (F145). Following participation in last month’s Exercise Ibsamar she is scheduled for an extended anti-piracy mission in the Mozambique Channel. It is in line with the Southern African Development Community (SADC) anti-piracy initiative off the east coast of the region involving Mozambique, South Africa and Tanzania. The South African commitment is codenamed Operation Copper by the Joint Operations Division of the SANDF.
The 2023/24 DoD annual report noted that “Maritime Defence continues to experience challenges with sourcing critical ship spares that are required to effect repairs on the SA Navy legacy vessels. Progress is being made to ensure the availability of combat-ready ships to meet the Joint Force Employment Requirements. With additional funding received from the National Treasury during FY2023/24 for the refit of Strategic Defence Package platforms, the Armscor Dockyard is in progress with the refit(s) of the frigate SAS Isandlwana. The appointment of a Commercial Refit Partner/Specialist Engineering Service for the Submarine is still to be finalised and will be unpacked during the next reporting cycle.”
Last year, the SAS Mendi and elements of the Maritime Reaction Squadron conducted three Operation Corona maritime coastal patrols in conjunction with the SAPS and Department of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment, namely in the Eastern Cape over the period 3 July to 1 August; in the Gansbaai area from 11 October to 8 November; and in the False Bay and Saldanha area from 20 October to 17 November 2023.
The annual report explained that the SA Navy’s inability to meet the set target of four coastal patrols for FY2023/24 was due to ongoing challenges experienced with preparing ships to be operationally available for deployments.
“The underachievement can be attributed to the unavailability of the SA Navy vessels at the Directed Level of Capability due lack of repair capacity at Armscor Dockyard and related procurement challenges. The Concept of Operations for Op Copper is being reviewed and efforts are being undertaken to improve the situation and ensure the availability of platforms for East Coast patrols.”
Other Navy highlights for the 2023/24 financial year were deploying its Chemical Biological Radiation Defence Team under Operation Prosper between 5 December 2023 and 28 April 2024 in support of the South African Police Service to neutralise illegal mining activities in South Africa; hosting Exercise Good Hope with Germany in January/February 2024 in the Saldanha area; and carrying out force preparation Exercise Red Lion in November 2023.
