I've been over this to people in PMs. Procurement is not a simple thing to accomplish.
On the general side of things, time-lines mean that you can't just dovetail types neatly into place. Plus there's the wee thing of budget. To meet NATO member state requirements (I.E. 2% GDP) TG spends roughly $159.8Bn on defence, this is second only to the US in expenditure which although slightly insane is legitimately possible, so I think there's some leeway for variety of types in there
The initial candidates in the attack helicopter program were much like the British tender. Apache, Tiger, Rooivalk, Cobra and Commanche. Tiger and Commanche were immediately discounted on accord of price and long lead times leaving the two existing American gunships and Rooivalk.
The Cobra offered to TG was somewhat of a halfway house between Whiskey and Zulu and as such had not even been built. The Apache was already in service but the initial tender to TG excluded both Hellfire and Longbow negating much of the preconceived edge that the aircraft had.
So with only two real options to go with and one of them being castrated before the word go the Rooivalk ended up being the choice. The main points that made this happen were as follows.
- Free from US restricted equipment meaning any future resale is easier as well as any integration of systems from outside the US or from sources not endorsed by them
- Commonality with the puma and super puma fleet due to common mechanical components
- Seeing as the aircraft had flown but was still in the development cycle any relatively minor changes could be made before mass-production with limited impact
This is where things get... Complicated. Just as South Africa has Tol Galen has had more than its fair share of issues with the Rooivalk since inception, not insurmountable but enough to warrant a cause for concern to be filed against the project.
Firstly, due to a chronic lack of testing after the remedial changes had been made there were serious structural defects found in the first two airframes (which now coincidentally are ground instructional airframes at one of the colleges). Whilst politicians exchanged blows about how this had come to have happened Atlas/Denel and McMillan (one of the big three TG aerospace companies) frantically attempted to right the structural defects for the next LRIP batch which in time they did, this however had a knock on effect impacting on systems integration and testing which resulted in the first operational aircraft only being able to fire their cannon and unguided rockets.
Time passes to around 2004, the fleet has been stored for some time now, occasionally coming out to keep the aircraft airworthy, various companies got fines and new contracts were signed to get the aircraft into service (which had now been cut to just 16 airframes) by 2008 re-manufacturing had begun and by 2010 the fleet was finally ready to see service some 6 years late and 60% over budget.
In the meantime whilst all this was going on TG was of course chronically short of attack helicopters, gunship conversions from utility helicopters were hardly ideal in the new century and the Rooivalk didn't appear to be coming any time soon. The US still refused at that time to sell Longbow and Hellfire to TG who still wanted it on the Rooivalk, so the only actionable choice was to buy you guessed it - A.129s.
What initially started out as somewhat of a stopgap solution snowballed into a full blown purchase after the Rooivalk project took a turn for the worse and indeed the AW129 as it now is has become the main attack helicopter of TG, being refined and sharpened to such an extent that it now rivals the Rooivalk in final their condition.
As can be seen, I didn't come to these choices on a whim. If I'd have had my way I'd have single handedly built a whole fleet of RAH-66s but alas Rooivalk and Mongeese are what we have. On a related note, the Rooivalk fleet is openly up for sale to streamline training and supply chains, if they were sold they'd get replaced by a further twenty or so AW129 / AW729s.
~Mark.
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But those Nimrods (for example) are awesome! Though one question: You have an Island but no float planes?
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