\n\t\tAnalysts say years of funding cuts and skills losses have left the SANDF unable to mount a credible defence.\n\t<\/p>\n
South Africa faces no immediate threat of external attack, but the SA National Defence Force (SANDF) is impaired to the point that the country is in no position to repel one, defence analysts say. <\/p>\n
Even if the SANDF had not suffered a major loss of funding, critical capabilities and operational skills over the past decades, defence analyst Dean Wingrin said the US military is in a league of its own and would have less trouble dealing with the SA military than it did with the Venezuelan armed forces in the weekend strike. <\/p>\n
\u201cWith the current state of the SANDF, we are not in a position to fend off any attack,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
SANDF ill-equipped to counter external threats<\/p>\n
South Africa\u2019s position at the tip of Africa placed the US at a logistic disadvantage, but the US military could handle it as it has aircraft carriers at sea, long-range missiles and strategic bombers capable of operating from the continental US and Ascension Island in the mid-Atlantic. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw the severe hammering Iran received and it had large numbers of modern air defence systems and forewarning of strikes. <\/p>\n
ALSO READ: BMA arrests more undocumented foreign nationals entering SA illegally<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cYet their military still suffered badly during the limited engagement,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Wingrin said it was unrealistic to expect SA to fend off an attack if America engaged in regime change outside its new doctrine of focusing on dominance in the western hemisphere. <\/p>\n He said SA should be looking at equipping and funding itself to compare with its African peers. It cannot afford to lose any more capability, nor should it. <\/p>\n SA cannot afford to lose any more capability<\/p>\n \u201cThe best defence for SA and its economy in the new world order is to re-evaluate its past practices and make wise political pronouncements and economic policies, putting non-alignment into practice,\u201d Wingrin added. <\/p>\n Helmoed-R\u00f6mer Heitman, a defence expert, said SA\u2019s modest submarine fleet may be far from an advantage against global military powers, but it could play a realistic deterrent role in forcing powerful actors to think twice before targeting the country\u2019s waters. <\/p>\n ALSO READ: Ramaphosa\u2019s breakaway to Mauritius was \u2018no secret,\u2019 Presidency says<\/a><\/p>\n He said a small submarine force of about six vessels would not deter a major power from an act important to its interests. <\/p>\n But it would precipitate a careful risk and benefit analysis that might dissuade military superpowers from action in those waters. <\/p>\n To achieve this, the SA Navy would have to get its fleet working, upgraded, get new torpedoes and mines and, preferably, also missiles. <\/p>\n SA far away and too unimportant<\/p>\n \u201cI do not see any of the major powers; US, China, India and Russia, [which] has shot its bolt and apart from nukes is a has-been on the way down, broken economy and shrinking population, being bothered by us. We are too far away and too unimportant.\u201d <\/p>\n According to Heitman, there are two possible exceptions: should there be a war between China and the West, which he did not foresee, the Western powers would need the sea route around the Cape. <\/p>\n