Department of Defence Annual Report 2008-2009

| Department of Defence |
| Programme 3: Air Defence |
improve growth. The number of MSDS in service
in the Air Force increased from 893 to 1 100, with a
race representation of 90.3% black and 9.7% white,
and gender distribution of 29.5% women and 70.5%
men.
The Reserves made a valuable contribution towards
achieving the Air Force’s objectives. The shortage
of skilled personnel, caused by poor retention of
personnel, was offset to a certain extent by the use of
Reserve pilots including the command and control
environment. In total 635 Reserve Force members
generated 91 625 man-days for the year. In addition
to the continuation of training of Air Force Reserve
Squadrons, 40 Reservists attended courses which
included basic military training, personnel courses,
skills training and developmental courses.
Measures to improve asset management included the
annual Supply Support evaluation of units, which
showed an average compliance rate of 82.75%.
The Auditor-General identied two units whose
asset management practices were below standard.
The self-accounting status of these units will be
withdrawn and they will become ledger units of
other self-accounting units. Downsizing of the Air
Force’s inventory progressed during the year with
the present number of ledgers on various systems at
415 907 compared to 1 360 000 at the beginning of
the downsizing process.
The main runway upgrade of AFB Waterkloof has
progressed well and the expected completion date
for the rst phase is the end of June 2009. Owing
to inadequate funding of facility maintenance
and other issues between the DOD and the
National Department of Public Works (NDPW),
Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) issues
(e.g. delegations and appointment of contractors),
remained unresolved throughout the year.
The deterioration of facilities remains a major
concern. Problems with facilities in dolomite areas
led to the relocation of the Air Force Gymnasium
to AFB Hoedspruit, to accommodate the Military
Skills Development System (MSDS) basic training.
Rehabilitation is in progress at the Air Force College,
while the future of 68 Air School is still undecided.
The possible relocation of AFB Durban to La Mercy
requires urgent attention, to ensure continuity in
operational air capabilities in KwaZulu-Natal and
adjacent areas.
Some critical skills are no longer readily available in
the Air Force and need to be acquired from industry
at exorbitant cost. To counter the loss of personnel,
however, increased numbers of technicians are
being trained, and high-level negotiations with role
players in the aviation industry have been initiated to
address a joint human resources strategy for training
and the utilisation of scarce human resources.
The prolonged underfunding has caused an erosion
of air weapon-system integration, which has created
“bow waves”. These have not been resolvable
within present budget allocations and have led to
sustainability issues. Ageing systems and the lack
of funding for spares to repair these systems are in
some cases aggravated by obsolescence to the extent
that they are no longer supported by industry. The
Air Force was not funded to operate the Strategic
Defence Package aircraft at the intended rates. The
contract, project and warranty-cover afforded the
Hawk and Gripen Systems to date is rapidly coming
to an end and available funds are insufcient to
contract effectively in-service logistics support. To
address this shortfall only ad hoc contracts can be
entered into, which seriously impacted on aircraft
availability. The underfunding also impacted
on force preparation, to the extent that some
competencies of air-and-ground crews were lost,
resulting in specic capabilities not being available
anymore. The funding of incentives from the
operating budget at the expense of operating output
also remains unresolved. To mitigate the impact,
the Air Force has introduced various initiatives to
improve affordability and efciency, for example
,the introduction of an economical side-by-side
basic ying trainer and the increased utilisation of
Reserves. The Air Force is also at present reviewing
its force design and force structure to improve
sustainability.
Notwithstanding the challenges experienced during
the past year, the Air Force was to a large extent still
able to meet its ordered commitments and required
combat-readiness levels. This can be attributed to
the dedication and commitment of its personnel.
It enabled the Air Force to achieve 73% of the
planned readiness of aircraft and aircrew availability
and to y 94.6% of the planned ying hours. In
most cases where targets were not met, it could be
attributed to a shortage of aircrew and experienced
technicians, low-aircraft availability due to long lead
times on spares, and protracted under-funding of
capabilities.
The skills losses continued unabated, and resulted in
a decrease in experience levels within the Air Force.
Considerable progress was, however, made in areas
such as human resource transformation and the
Annual Report FY 2008 - 2009
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