Unlikely. They’re all either much poorer than South Africa, have far fewer people, or both. Most are both, & see SADC as a way to hang off South Africas coat tails.

Unfortunately, Swerve is correct. The other SADC nations just do not have money to spend. SADC is really South Africa attempting to uplift those countries around it. I’m not sure how successful this will be.

With South Africa in the top 10% largest economies in the world, I know that there has been pressure on them to increase the % defence budget and so play a larger role in peacekeeping. The defence budget as a % of GDP is relatively low.

The problem being faced is which of the services gets the largest chunk of a small pie.

Almost all of the electronics on the Valour class are of South African origin. Perhaps this has to do with the difference?

There seems to be some sort of fairing underneath the forward fuselage forward of the nose wheel, is this some sort of optical device? FLIR maybe- like on the pakistani Rose-3 Mirages?

Sealord, There was always the Mirage F1-C versions that had the air-intercept Cyrano IV Radar. South Africa ordered and eventually assembled a version concentrating on ground attack called the F1-AZ. Although the nose profile looked the same, a close examination reveals not a glassfibre radome, but a metal nose tipped at the end by an AIDA ranging radar. As this is vastly smaller than the Cyrano, space was there to fit a retractable refueling probe simialr to the Super Etendards, and a laser rangefinder.

Once the Mirage 2000 entered service, surplus Air defence F1-C airframes in France were recycled to make them into the F1-CT tactical ground attack aircraft. It has the best of both worlds in that it features the undernose laser rangefinder, as well as the full Cyrano radar system, albeit updated from IV to IVM-R. There was obviously no space left for a retractable fuel probe, but the original F1-C in French service had a small fuselage extension plug in front of windsacreen that enabled the addition of a fixed refueling probe. It is this version that is used in the illustration you mention above.

There was also the recce F1CR with Thomson TRT-33 or TRT-40 cameras under the nose, but this fairing is different and more symmetrical looking.

The Spey engined Phantoms problems stemmed from the fact that the intakes were enlarged 20% to cater for the greater airflow requirements of the Spey over the J-79. The entire fuselage from the intakes to the Spey exhaust nozzles was widened by 6 inches, although the wingspan remained the same.

But the biggest problem was the bell-end afterburner section of the Spey. This was much larger than the J-79 and contributed to a massive increase in lower fuselage wave drag.

The UK Phantom had much superior low level acceleration over the vanilla F4’s, but an inferior top speed due to this wave drag.

I am so thankful, for the RAAF that they did not go with the Mirage IVK idea, for
1/ its range was inadequate
2/ its payload was inadequate (unless nuclear!)
3/ imagine what political restrictions that the French would have put on its
use (Just look at what the RAAF had to put up with when they considered
using-deploying Mirage III to Vietnam!)
4/ It would be obsolete way before the F-111 or TRS-2 design

Pioneer, the point, as mentioned above, was that the proposed Mirage IVK variant was to have Speys, which are much more fuel efficient than the ATAR 9K50. And there is no way the Mirage would have been obsolete before the TSR2. I’d rather a plane in service than a dream….:diablo:

Oh well, it unfortunately shows that it will become very much harder for the medium/smaller non aligned countries to do this sort of thing. Collaboration seems to be the only way forward when you are competing in this league.

Of course, if the South African Airforce were to order a second squadron, the above situation would change. This appears unlikely however.

Indeed Nick… and there are plenty of systems South Africa could benefit from India, ALH and possibly LCA. I also believe that South Africa would benefit in the Naval arena with closer links to Indian shipbuilders. Either way, from a geopolitical viewpoint, such co-operation between Brazil, India and South Africa makes perfect sense, with each country benefitting from the others expertise, but without constricting “moral” double standards being applied.

On the Denel blacklisting issue. I believe it has to do with favouritism and corruption. We all know that the arms industry is very corrupt, wherever in the world you go. In fact, I believe that an arms deal without corruption of some sort is almost impossible these days! Perhaps Denels bribe was insultingly low…:diablo: