DefenceWeb

SA Army Chief Lieutenant General Lawrence Mbatha was in Malaysia in June on an official goodwill visit, two months after he was in the south-east Asian country as part of a South African delegation to the 19th Defence Services Exhibition (DSA) in Kuala Lumpur. On his itinerary were stops at the office of his Malaysian counterpart, General Tan Sri Dato’ Seri Hj Azhan Bin Hj Md Othman and the country’s National Centre for Defence Studies (Pusat Pengajian Pertahanan Nasional – PUSPHAHANAS).

Recently, Turkish company Raff Military Textile announced it would join the Turkish Exporters Assembly (TEM) on its 21 to 25 July trip to Kampala, in Uganda. Such a visit comes as Uganda is attempting to attract foreign investors willing to locally produce a number of products and to reduce the importation of goods. While the effort is only centred on uniforms, it fits into a wider trend: Ankara is positioning itself as a major partner for African nations, and Kampala is in its tally.

There is a particular confidence that comes from spending one’s career on a trading floor, and Hendrik du Toit has it in abundance. The Ninety One chief executive, a man who built a global asset manager from a Johannesburg desk, looked at the South African National Defence Force this month and reached for the only verb his profession really trusts: close it.

South African Defence and Military Veterans Minister Angie Motshekga has said the Department of Defence (DoD) “managed to reduce the projected CoE (Compensation of Employees) shortfall” but did “not contribute significantly” to human resource cost pressures that lead to regular unauthorised expenditure.

The Kingdom of Morocco has ordered seven highly mobile field hospitals from Rheinmetall Mobile Systeme GmbH, with one field hospital intended for the Moroccan Ministry of Defence and the remaining six for the Ministry of the Interior. The order value is in the mid double-digit million-euro range and delivery is scheduled for 2027 to 2028. Processing and delivery of the systems to the Kingdom of Morocco will be handled by a local medical equipment distributor.

2026 is a landmark year for the United States, with the nation marking 250 years of independence, and this includes commemorating the United States Navy’s (USN’s) 250th anniversary. As part of nationwide celebrations, the USN is set to host representatives from over 130 international navies and coast guards, including representatives from seven African nations, at the headline International Naval Review (INR) 250, in the Port of New York and New Jersey from 3 to 8 July.

Thirty SA Army officers are presently on a two-week exchange visit to the top Brazilian Army academic facility where they will be exposed to what is termed a world class approach to developing combat officers.

Enabled awareness and decision augmentation specialist Global Command and Control Technologies (GC2T) has added a high-altitude pseudo satellite (HAPS) to its portfolio, providing end users with a capability similar to that of a satellite without its associated costs. Cobus Valentine, Chief Business Establishment & Head of Product Management at GC2T, explained that the primary role of the HAPS platform is to provide either a communications relay capability or a surveillance capability.

BabaSky Technologies, part of Nigeria’s UNICCON group of companies, has demonstrated a new fibre-optic controlled loitering munition that is completely resistant to electronic jamming and signal spoofing. The company said a series of rigorous operational flight tests with the UNIKAM-FO1 was carried out at the Nigerian Defence testing range, Military Cantonment, Jaji, Kaduna state.

Mobility remains a critical capability for any modern military. Without the ability to move personnel, equipment, and mission-critical systems rapidly across varied terrain, even the best-equipped force can falter. It is in this context that Astra Trucks, as the sole authorised representative of Iveco Defence Vehicles (IDV) in South Africa, is preparing to support the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) through supplying several heavy-duty trucks.