Air Force losing skilled staff

By Wendell Roelf

Aggressive head-hunting by civilian airlines was contributing to the dearth of much needed skills and expertise in the South African Air Force, MPs attending a portfolio committee on defence heard on Tuesday.

 "In the last two to three years we have lost about 13 black pilots, in addition to four women pilots to civil aviation... people get phoned, it's not normal, the very aggressive head-hunting," said Air Force chief Lieutenant-General Roelf Beukes.

 Beukes was briefing the committee on the Air Force's strategic vision -- called Vision 2012 -- for the future, when he mentioned the poaching as one of the factors impacting on representivity in the Air Force. He said that there were four key strategic issues the Air Force of the future needed to consider -- human resource development and utilisation; affordability and sustainability; force preparation and force employment; and integration of new aircraft.

 "Currently 59 percent of our budget of R2,1-billion goes to personnel. Another 25 percent goes to contracts, for example Denel.

 "This means there is only 16 percent to run the Air Force -- for fuel, spares, vehicles and radar stations," he said.

 The 16 percent also meant that systems integrity had degraded and now warranted urgent upgrades and repair work at air bases throughout the country.

 "We have worked out that we need about R295-million in the airforce to achieve our goals," with perhaps decreasing the personnel and contracts packages making up this money, he said. Beukes said currently pilots were logging insufficient air time which impacted on their readiness and morale.

 "If they can't fly, they can't control their aircraft... and technicians can't fix aircraft if they aren't flown."

 He said that by the year 2010 the Air Force wanted to fly an average of 60,000 hours per year, and would increase flying hours by 3,000 hours a year until this target was reached. Plans were also afoot for an annual force preparation exercise, possibly involving Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries. Another area that would be targeted in the strategic vision was human resource transformation, with a clear trend indicating that there had been a decrease of whites in the Air Force.

 "In 1994 at officer level there were only 27 blacks, but today there are 450 black officers. For the non-commissioned officers this figure was 1400 in 1994, but is now 3700."

Beukes admitted that representivity amongst pilots, navigators, engineers and technical personnel did not reflect the country's demographics.

"However, technical apprentices in the Air Force were an area in which one could see results, with 72 percent of all apprentices blacks... (this is) coming to where we want to go.

"These are the people that will work on the Hawks and Gripons in about six years time," he said with reference to the trainer and fighter jets the Air Force has acquired as part of South Africa's multi-billion rand arms package.

Beukes said the Air Force currently had 16 black commanding officers, and he was "positive transformation was making progress, albeit slowly and with some problems".

Sapa