The SAAF Forum

http://mg.co.za/article/2012-03-19-navy ... nder-deal/


i wonder if the people making the comments even know what a Frigate is. Bloody ignorant civilians

I suggest you bone up on your math. 4 minis added to the 10 busses may increase the raw numbers but hardly constitute a 40% increase in passenger capacity,



There are no separate budgets in the navy - it all goes into one pot and, surprise, surprise - where do you think the major portion of the cash will go?



Which will only make them more unwelcome. Have a look at the records of other navies who have tried this - the Royal Navy's Fishery Patrol in the 1930s is a good example. Called into being to protect British trawlers from Icelandic gunboats and police the fishing zones. The cream of the Dartmouth graduates never ended up there - and anyone who did would probably, after 20 years service, become a dead-end lieutenant commander being passed over till early retirement followed.

You are suggesting a prostitution of a service. Anti-piracy patrol is classically a coast guard function. A navy is not supposed to play policeman but train up on those shiny war canoes to defeat another navy who wants to attack. (Or attack another navy the political masters don't like). Sure there has always been overlap - but ultimately a navy performs the coast guard job less efficiently than a coast guard - with it's onw tradtions, values and budgets, would. Which is why the DEAT vessels came into being in the first place. The navy did not want the job then.

I say again - just because it floats does not make it the same.

Many years ago, at a seance led by then commander Stinky Retief, this problem was extensively studied, reviewed and mulled over. The conclusions are the same today as back in the sixties. A separate service using lightly armed commercial of-the-shelf hulls laregely manned by civilians but carrying a small contingent of uniformed - preferably police back then - who had the legal power of arrest. It was deemed more important than a navy.

Look at the current naval piracy patrols off the Horn of Africa. It may not be noticeable but the pirates are winning hands down just by the sheer amount of money it is costing to keep a fleet of warships going there. An American professor did a wonderful analysis of costs a few years ago - with a realistic budget for the pirates' outlay - even down to the cost of feeding hostages. An average hijacking cost something - I'm speaking from memory - something like $140000. And it worked from scratch, having to buy everything, boat, outboard, weapons etc. Anything above that was profit. It costs more to keep one warship on station for less that a day. It would be far cheaper to just pay all the aspirant pirates not to be pirates.

Ultimately in virtually every long term terrorist war that has been lost, which is largely what piracy is in reality, that defeat comes to the legal entities because they cannot afford to carry on fighting it. The one side has to try and defend everywhere all the time and the other can pick and choose when and where to make cheap small scale attacks. The books just don't balance in the end.

Hi Eugene,

You make it sound as if the SAN exists in order to serve the careers of its officers! As if ships are to be evaluated in terms of the promotion possibilities they offer to officers rather than the job they do.

Do you know, in an ideal world this probably is better done by a civvy agency. But we're not in an ideal world and our country has a little problem. DEAT can't patrol our coastline themselves. They can't even contract it out anymore as Sekunjalo clearly aren't up to it and even Smit Amandla have been accused of conflicts of interest. The police can't do it. And the Navy doesn't want to do it. So that leaves only one last option: the job just isn't going to get done.

And the sort of model I was more thinking of was the Royal Fleet Auxiliary or the US Military Sealift Command. Merchant seamen operating non-commissioned vessels, leaving the Navy free to do the fighty stuff. The fact that the RFA is a less prestigious career is neither here nor there, plenty of people want that job.

The real answer is to establish a proper Coast Guard as an independent state agency that carries out the maritime mandate of all relevant government departments and agencies such as Customs & Immigration, Fisheries, Environment, Transport, Disaster Management, Trade and Industry, Search and Rescue, etc. - the same as other proper Coast Guards.

If anyone interested in this topic has not yet read Chris Bennett's paper on the subject, take a look here: www.iss.co.za/pubs/ASR/ADR18/Bennett.html - this is essential reading if you want to really understand the subject.

Hear, hear! And the vessels, or some of them, already exist for the job.

It doesn't?




Neither of which are actual naval institutions. So before creating a bastard agency, such as you propose, why not go the whole hog and have a Coast Guard and be done with it?

Where the Ford-Class seaward defence boat's not used for this at one stage ? I remember reading that they one or two ships where manned mostly by conscripts at one stage, and based in Port Elizabeth or East London.

Indeed, how about we try to create a list of all ships and boats owned and operated by government departments and agencies excluding the Navy.

Would the coast guard fall under the DoD or safety and security. Most of there training will be done at navy units. Would they have there own logistic or get help from navy or contractors. Would the fishery and police water wing then fall away.


Police got 2 boats in Simmons town and there is ruth first.

The Fords were hardly used for anything - Haarlem as a survey vessel saw use but the rest were seldom manned on a permanent basis and those based at Durban and PE were manned on weekends by the CF contingents and used for training purposes. One little 40mm Bofors and a few depth charges would hardly have defended Durban against anything! In the patrol area - they were too slow, too small, too short legged and too lively for any real use.

Coast Guards have their own administration - they don't "fall under" any one department as they perform services for many different departments.

Yes they would take over the boats and other relevant maritime assets of the departments that they serve.

BTW does anyone know what happened to the "Kuswag" boats and aircraft that were active AFAIK at least until the late 1980s - they primarily used to deal with oil spills?

To kick of the list:

Environment Affairs (or whatever they call themself these days):
Sarah Baartman - Number: 1. Role: OPV. Length 82.9m, Crew: 29
Lillian Ngoyi class - Number: 3. Role: IPV. Length 46.8m. Crew: ??. (These boats were built locally by Farocean Marine) (The USCG Sentinel class boats are based on the same basic design. It has a 25mm cannon main armament - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinel_Class_cutters)

I followed Roger's advice and actually read the paper. And it turns out Bennett's position is, uhm, mine (I mean, the position is the same as my position, not that I'm Bennett).

A few quotes from Bennett (and, don't worry, they're not out of context).

"Accepting that neither South Africa nor any of the other littoral states of southern Africa, either singly or jointly, has the financial or technical wealth to be able to maintain a separate naval and coastguard capability, it has always been accepted that some compromise solution is required."


"There have been a number of suggestions that the duties of the South African Navy could be logically, fairly easily and cost-effectively extended to include those of a coastguard. This approach is born out when a study is made of the accepted roles of an average navy."

And this is Bennett summing up:

"Nevertheless there are some very cogent and logical reasons apart from acceptance of the normal role of navies, in the arguments for involving the SA Navy in coastguard functions:

- It already assists in the performance of some coastguard tasks and has done so for many decades.

- It already possesses a significant part of the organisational expertise and crewing skills required for the operation of a coastguard.

- A coastguard could easily be accommodated within a navy organisational structure by the creation of a dedicated flotilla. Chile, for instance, operates its coastguard as part of its navy. In addition, the South African Navy already owns an impressive infrastructure with which to technically support coastguard vessels. This supporting infrastructure includes the only naval dockyard in Sub-Saharan Africa.

- The extension of duties would represent good value for tax-payer money by increasing the utility of the South African Navy during peacetime."

I fully agree that a projected coastguard could easily share the dockyard and maintenance infrastructure - and even some of the administration - with the SAN. But when you create a "separate flotilla" within the navy you are heading for troubles, mostly of a financial nature. When cash is short it will not be going to the coastguard flotilla - but to the "real" navy. Which is one of the dangers of having that sort of organisation. A number of navies have the coastguard as part of the overall structure but in most cases they are kept fairly separate - right down to pay scales, uniforms, and personnel recruitment.

As Bennet points out the navy has long performed coast guard functions - but never economically. I participated in innumerable patrols of the Namibian coast in a type 12 and we never apprehended a single illegal fishermen. There were plenty of them though - 35 squadron had albums of pictures of Taiwanese, Spanish, Korean, Russian trawlers merrily fishing away in EEZ waters. One frigate patrolling 500000 square kilometres of sea is hardly the answer as an efficient means of deterring poaching. Or even pirates.

Later two of the sweepers were converted to fisheries patrol vessels - which made a lot more economic sense especially as the normal sweeper crew was reduced from 40 to 26. However they were a failure in that most trawlers could outrun them. They would depend on SAAF recce as to positions of poachers - but the very fact that a noisy Albatross has just buzzed them put the fishermen on alert and when they saw the sweeper on radar they would merely up trawlnets and ring down for 20 knots and away they would go. A lot of them could outrun a sweeper even with trawlgear down. And the 40mm had neither the range nor the accuracy to scare them.

For policing duties you need lots of vessels - and they should be cheap, economic and have small crews. If they DO run into problems the navy is on hand to help - but it's unlikely to be necessary in the majority of cases.

They would have share with the navy. It would cost a fortune to build up from scratch. The Navy can train 1000 recruits per BMT course. But this intake is only 300 for this year. They can train alongside them. But wear a different cap. I do not see a need for different working dress but if they (navy or coast guard) want they can have different office and ceremonial dress. To keep cost down the navy will take care of the logistics and admin with a increase in there budget.

Ok well tell us what types of ships do we need then?