"We have a situation where there is a gradual erosion of the cathodic material used in preserving the gun"
What on gods green earth are you talking about ?
I work in the marine industry. Cathodes are used UNDER the waterline as sacrificial material for corrosion. Doesn't work in air.

Old doesnt mean anything if a gun is well looked after. That's a CIS50 from Singapore produced in the late 80's. We still used 12.7 and 1919 browning receivers from WW2 in the SADF ! We used Vickers guns on the range at times. Those guns made it through WW2 and we still had them in inventory in the 90's. They looked like museum pieces, because they were looked after meticulously for decades.

Have another look at the pic. Look closely at the ammo bin holder on the mount. It actually has pitting in the metal. They tried to cover it up with paint. The only time I've ever seen a MG look like that it came from a cash that was buried in mud for God knows how long.

I still don't understand your argument about the salt air. How is that preventing him from cleaning it ? That boat doesn't enough carry fuel to patrol out for days.
As for the barrel, I suspect that they only remove it for cleaning as it's easier to do. That's why it looks in better shape than the receiver. Barrels are also made from different blends of steel, for obvious reasons, that makes them last longer.

I can only speak for the SADF/SANDF,but I would get brought up on orders if I or anyone I commanded returned a weapon in that state. Zero excuses.
No different than anyone who damages expensive equipment because of negligence.

Anyone who's served in any military would tell you that the state of a units gear is a good indicator of its leadership,training and morale. No matter how old it is. Hell I could tell you if a Bn. has its sh!t squared away by looking at the state of the guard gate.

Henry240:


It is not even a boat issue, it is one gun, which is old and has no evidence of rust. I have provided enough evidence to support my argument that what we see isn't rust.

I stand by my argument until there is evidence to the contrary.

Look at the barrel of this gun. We have a situation where there is a gradual erosion of the cathodic material used in preserving the gun. That's all there is to it.

quote




[/quote]

For some reason you seem to think I'm trying to insult the Nigerian Navy. I'm not.
A am concerned about the guy and his boat crew. I'm a fellow African x-soldier and I don't want to see that guy get killed protecting his country , because he wasn't given the tools or the training to do his job properly.

That weapon is NOT going to function properly. If it looks like that from the outside the inside WILL be worse. I've inspected hundreds of machine guns and cannons and I can tell you a weapon should never get to that state even in the worst of circumstances. If you don't believe me ask any of the vets in this forum or anywhere else for that matter.

That's a CIS 50MG heavy machine gun it's not a AK. It has a complex dual feed system and any heavy MG needs to be tuned just right to work without having to re-cock it every 3 rounds. If his crew gets ambushed on a river and it doesn't function they are dead. River ambushes are no joke.

HMG's are designed to be field maintainable. Being out on a long patrol is no excuse. Rust does not appear overnight. All you need is a drum and some diesel to get the worst out of it. Then it's just a question of routine lubing.

Henry240:

There are over 5,000 creeks which require constant daily patrols. Not 50 or 500. The navy operates more than 600 riverine boats, it is not unusual that rust might affect a single gun out of over 600 units patrolling the AOR which includes 5,000 internal waterways. That's a single gun, which has unfortunately deteriorated due to salt.

I have seen front-line, active US navy ships with rusts on their equipment. Now, we are talking about the Nigerian navy which by a long shot is the most active in Africa. The damage on that single boat is not representative of the rest of the vessels in the navy's fleet.

That's not 1 days worth of rust my friend.
Plenty of pics around the net of 50 cals on blue water navy boats if you want to compare. Salt is no excuse for letting your weapon get to that state. I don't even want to think what the barrel looks like. I my unit that gunner would be in serious trouble bordering on a court martial.

If you're in the marine environment you need to clean that thing every time you get back to dock. That's a riverine patrol boat. It doesn't stay out for weeks on end.

Henry240:


It's not up for any argument. My explanation is straight forward.

The only role I was envisaging for the Eland/AML was peacekeeping missions in Africa. For that you need a C-130 transportable platform and something that can maneuver (about turn) in congested and narrow city streets and jungle roads. Not many 8x8's that is light enough and has a decent turret for C-130. Stryker is about the only one.

I've worked with both ratel 90's and Rooikat and would definately not recommend going back to Elands in any conventional mechanised org., but for the money you'd spend on upgrading a AML 90 VS. buying a new 8x8 it would be worth having a few for peacekeeping missions. If you had the budget you could go for something like the Panhard Crab

Ps. I'd wager that that crew survived. If the IED penetrated you'd see blood all over the turret insides.

kikuyu1:


Hrmnn and 61stmech will cry for a week when they read this but imo,the little AML60/90 has served its purpose. Time for a larger multi role platform along the lines of the Badger,(I can't find a pic). Its larger, fires a rapid 57mm and can be fitted with an RPG cage for the AFV role or a smaller 30mm when purely APC.

jeebus Guy !
How about you clean that 12.7 once in awhile.

Henry240:
Nigerian Navy Gunboats, locally built Epenal gunboats used in patrolling Nigeria's 5,000+ creeks.

Nigerian Navy

Never heard of it being airdropped.
Back then they would just land a C-130 and drive it out of the back. I think the Israelis used it like that in the Entebbe raid.

Hrmnn:


While the Iron Eagle seems to have done well as an air droppable fire support vehicle concept, would it have been possible to replace the Ferret with the Eland?

Since the funding for the Iron Eagle was pulled, substituting a preexisting vehicle would be preferential, and large numbers of Elands would've been available as they were being replaced by the Rooikat in the 1990s.

The Israelis and the French Foreign Legion seemed to deploy AMLs pretty successfully in the airborne role, so there was already a precedent for it.

Was developed in SA to replace the Ferret for the parabats as a fire support/recon vehicle. It was planned to mount quick-change pallet-mounted main armament (M40 106mm recoilless, Milan ATGM, 81mm M3 mortar, R107 MLRS), pintle-mount 7.62mm MG4 on right side.

nemesis2u:


i like this Scarab
any info

The Ferrets were supposed to be replaced by the Mechem Iron Eagle. They just ran out of money before it could be done. Just like all the other projects at the time.

Here's a link to a guy in England who's restoring one that was sold to Alvis.

http://www.warwheels.net/Acorn_IE_ScarabScoutINDEX.html

Ironically, the SANDF then went and made exactly the same mistake in the 90's when they got rid of the Eland90's.
A upgraded Eland with denel's fire ctrl. made for that turret and a 2.4 diesel would be perfect for peacekeeping in Africa.
C-130 transportable with just enough firepower to deal with rebels on landcrousers.

Hrmnn:
Ferrets of the Parabats.

In the 1960s they were relegated to storage in Grahamstown as a result of the Eland programme. Many were brand new, less than ten years old and had barely been driven. In my opinion the decision to mothball the entire Ferret fleet in favour of the redundant Elands was one of the most wasteful things the old defence force ever did.

Don't get me wrong here, I love the Eland and it was superior to the Ferret in almost every way except some aspects of mechanical reliability (gearboxes and bevel boxes on the Ferret gave much fewer problems, despite being very similar to the same ones on the AML/Eland).

However, if you spend a fortune buying 200+ brand new armoured cars straight off the production line, you cannot then begin replacing them with an identical vehicle less than six years later, and literally have them all out of service by ten years later. That is an incredible waste of money and logistics and to this day I am convinced it was a political decision made by the National Party, which was trying to cozy up to France as their new arms supplier at the time after relations with the U.K. cooled.

In the late 1970s the Ferrets were reactivated by 44 Parachute Brigade and fitted with Recoilless rifles and MILAN ATGMs. They were modified to be airdropped.

As part of Exercise Magersfontein in 1988 the Parabat Ferrets were tested in a mock airborne assault off Walvis Bay. It was strongly implied at the time that Exercise Magersfontein was to test tactics which might be used against the Cubans if they crossed into South West Africa.

The Cubans never came, and the Ferrets were retired for the final time at some point between 1989 and 1994.

I read a news headline in the early 1990s which mentioned the SADF had sold off some to Malawi, but that is the last I ever heard of them.

Presumably most shared the same fate as most of the noddies and were cut up for scrap by Armscor's disposal division.

One is currently at the War Museum in Joburg, one or two are at the Bats museum in Tempe, and two or three are at the Armour Corps Museum (also Tempe). One of those is running and may be the only operational example left in RSA; someone posted a photo of it on this thread earlier.

Actually, one of the reasons the ZT-3 was chosen as a beamrider was because of experiences with using Milans in the bush.
The reconnaissance reg. used them in some sabre vehicle ops. and the wires got tangled up in branches all the time. Milans were so ineffective that they went back to using recoilless guns on their vehicles.

The first ZT-3's fired by Hannes Nortman and his Ratels against FAPLA tanks were actually pre-production prototypes. The engineers at Kentron were busy with using them as testing rounds when they were taken and put into action in Angola during Moduler on pre-production vehicles.

Hrmnn:


Of course, and I certainly wasn't trying to imply otherwise.

Where I used to live in the Free State (just northeast of Odendaalsrus) the terrain was extremely arid and flat. A Ratel ZT3 would be invariably more useful there than in say, the Angolan bush.

Even more so in parts of the Northern Cape and Namibia where it's much more sparsely vegetated.

I was merely pointing out that's why the Ingwe wasn't used with more success during Ops Moduler, Hooper, and Packer.



I have always held that by studying the battles and tactics of the past we can learn a lot for the future. There is no reason that the lessons of the Angolan war cannot be applied to any other modern conflict.

I did not personally serve in the SADF but I have nothing but the utmost respect for those that did.

"new light armour vehicle for the armour guys"
Don't think that will happen anytime soon.
The SANDF have more pressing needs like finding a Samil replacement.
That's why the only shot it had of being procured was if it was part of the hoefyster platform. Instead they added a 30mm for fire support.
The Samil replacement is another dumb decision from the 90's we are paying for now. They should have kept the Samil production line open for low rate production to replace the worn out vehicles over time and maybe even have some sales in africa where that vehicle comes into its own.

The ratel 81 will probably soldier on for a long time. That version of the Ratel takes much less of a beating ,because of its mission than a infantry or 90 version, so they should have more miles left in them.

MikeCZA:
I totally get your position.

But shouldn't that role be put up as part of the requirements for a new light armour vehicle for the armour guys not infantry. Putting the 90 on the Badger would the deny the future armoured brigade a chance to have a light armour capability.

The weapons(EMAK-30 an SS-77) on the Infantry variants would be there to provide sustained fire to cover own troops and vehicle movements , cause enemy troops to lay down their heads while own troops advance, destroy or disable enemy APC, tanks, IFV, Trucks, technicals etc.

Anyway! The only aspect of fire support I'm worried about for the mechanized infantry is that it seems there's no replacement for the Ratel-81.

The SANDF will never have the budget to use Ingwe's for fire support. Even in the old days, very few ZT3's were shot during training.
That's why you need a cheap bomb slinger to do fire support. As good as a 30mm is, it will never be very effective against bunkers buildings etc.
Just doesn't have the volume to carry enough HE for the job.

andrewza:





In a strange way the rooikat did replace the ratel 90.


The ratel 90 was procured to replace the eland 90 and was used in the armerd car recon role. It was seen as more mobile. The eland 90 all so originally was used many times to provide fire support. In fact SSB the active duty battalion with rooikats all so uses ratels and is one of the units that will replace the it ratels with badgers.

For me the FSV badger should of been 4 ingwen ATGM and the 30mm. Could of usef a ingwen with a therobaric warhead.

The pic is of a MOT Bn. doing a assault for media day at Lohatla or De Brug. Don't read too much into those things.

Ideally we should bring some Rooikat out of storage, upgrade and attach to the mech formations as dedicated fire support.

ActivateKruger:


That dinosaur turret going on the brand-new Badger, I refuse


However, you shouldn't forget how the Ratel 90 was born out of a "High Mobility" doctrine especially designed to dash into Angola and leave as quickly as possible. The fire support vehicle should have matched the speed of the assaulting IFVs and the APCs so putting the 90mm on the Ratel platform made sense.


Now, notice how the 90mm was becoming un-useful when the war was becoming conventional? Notice how the Olifants were brought into war to deal with heavy armour? So the question is, would the SANDF ever secretly dash into any neighboring territory for targets and comeback? No not likely to happen. If we invade another country, it would be a formal war where the Olifants would spearheaded the assault.

Would we use a Ratel 90 in some central African country like CAR? It wouldn't survive, it's light skinned and those dudes love their RPGs.

NB: Please notice how the Ratel 90 is absent in this assault formation (deliberately so)

35mm size

EMAK35 was a externally driven gun developed for the original project hoefyster back in the early 90's. Semi auto only unlike the 35DPG/GA35
The 35mm round is massive compared to the 30mm and has almost 2x the muzzle energy as legacy 30mm's.

Here's a PDF on the development of the GAMA. There's a model of a A-109 with it mounted in the chin.

MikeCZA:
Was the EMAK-35 developed or based from the SPAAG'S 35mm guns. They produced muzzle velocity almost the same as the EMAK-30.

They also had the GAMA I wonder if the Rooivalk was the reason for it to be thrown into the freezer too. As there was no need to mount weapons on the A109 LUH to replace the Alloute gunships.

I was referring to the fire support version of the Badger, not the IFV. The 30mm is more than adequate for a IFV. I'm especially pleased they stuck with a feed system that can be replenished one round at a time from inside the turret.
I would have preferred they went with the original 35mm emak as planned though. Why go for the current standard if you could leapfrog a generation.

The Emak 35 was also capable of upgrading to a 50mm supershot by just changing the barrel. The 35/50mm caliber is much deadlier than 30mm for AAA use. The US has even developed a beam riding guided 50mm round for it. Modern fire control makes IFV's as deadly in the AAA role as dedicated 1980's AAA.

As for fire support. We used the Ratel 90 for fire support even when the Rooikat was available. Remember the Rooikat's original mission was recon and probing actions. They would raid deep or into the flanks using their manoeuvrability. Think of it more of a cavalry vehicle like the US army uses in their armoured formations.
We did use them as fire support, but the KAT's speed is wasted if you pair it with a 6x6 Ratel. From operating nxt to them Heg/Steg i'd say the KAT was at least 2x faster.

Don't underestimate that 90mm. There are many a T-55/65 crew who did to their peril. The 90 could hit out to 2km and the low recoil meant you could stick it in a IFV platform and load a lot of rounds. Keep in mind that a technical with a ZU23 has nowhere near that range, because its such an unstable platform.
You're supposed to peg it to the ground when emplaced. You might get round 1 in the belt near me, but the nxt one is going to land in another country. On top of that it has to stop to fire and is un-armoured, so I just have to get close with my HE to perforate you.

For fire support you ideally need a vehicle that's built on the same platform as your IFV for logistics reasons and can be permanently attached to your mech infantry. Giving it the same gun is pointless as the whole idea of it is to take on targets like bunkers, buildings, walls etc. that the 30mm can't. Another thing most people don't consider is how much damage you can do to your own guys if you shoot 105/120mm close to your infantry. I have permanent hearing loss in my right ear from being too close to a olifant 105mm when it went off. They were supposed to use their horn before they fired. I came to with my face in the ground, a concussion,blown eardrum and unable to breath. Walked around like a zombie for 30mins.
Consider that when you shoot a gun like that , you are burning enough propellent to make pipe bomb that would absolutely flatten a big house. Now you are squeezing all that explosive energy through a hole not much more than 10cm across.
The 90mm was mounted much higher and you could have guys nxt to it when it went of without it taking out half the section.

ActivateKruger:


I find the 90mm an odd gun in modern battlefields. You either have formal armies using heavy armour that a 90mm can't penetrate or you have guys running around with Toyota bakkies that you'll have a hard time shooting with a 90mm. It's either you have a 76mm and below or 105mm and above.

As for the 30mm SANDF selection, I think it's a perfect choice as you would have noticed that the world now uses a 25/30mm as standard.

I would add to that "patrol,patrol, patrol"

A base isn't just a fence that you can hide behind and have hot chow and soft toilet paper.

You need to control the area around you. The most effective and often the most neglected way to do this is regular and focused patrolling.
It takes away the element of surprise from the enemy as well as making it hard for them to reconnoitre you're position. Patrolling is the first thing that goes by the wayside when discipline breaks down. Squad leaders who take shortcuts and miss waypoints should be severely dealt with.

Thats a big problem with most UN missions in Africa where they lock themselves in their bases and do the occasional vehicle patrol for show.

[quote author=LTGEN post=55781950][/quote]

The 90mm had a canister round that was devastating against infantry.
You need a mix of 20-30mm and 76-90-105mm for a good fire belt shoot.
In my opinion the SANDF made a mistake in selecting the 30mm for the fire support Badger. They should have used the old 90mm with 2x igwe's in that turret. They are saying the 60mm can be elevated low for that job, but it doesn't always occupy the battlespace where that's needed.

For coin, you can't do much better than a Rooikat 76. Just enough firepower to get the job done and a big ammo loadout for long endurance missions to hunt down/outflank technicals that would struggle to outrun or outshoot it.

MikeCZA:
Still under development.


I don't know with others but the 20/30mm guns will operate or fire single shots if necessary followed by 2-3 shot bursts. That's why the EMAK-30 has a single shot sniper mode.

Halfway through vasbyt muscleboys would be crying into their bush-hats. "Kannie-meer-nie-korporaal"
Those big biceps eats through calories.
I'd rather have a fat-body in my squad.
At least he carries some calories with him and you can always find a chocolate somewhere in his gear.

chkil0:
egypt

You're referring to "vicktor vicktor" being called over the radio.
That meant "fighter fighter" or vegter vegter in Afrikaans thus VV or vicktor-vicktor in radio alphabet.

This call would signal all units to start their air defence contact drills. Mainly "fisgraat" (fishbone)
with the vehicles. Every driver would immediately turn left or right based on his vehicle nr. and gun the engine to get out of the migs strafing run. They could pick up on your tracks or dust through the bush and follow it right up your arse if you stayed in convoy.

MikeCZA:
Interestingly is that when an attack was imminent units on the ground would get "victory" messages.


Some of the artillery guys' air defence was provided(SAMs) by UNITA.

That would all depend on how they were deployed by commanders.

You also have to consider that in later ops like Moduler we had supporting unita units with stingers as well as more competent AAA. Not sure how Cactus would have done against it. It's a much easier target for a command guided round like Cactus. Who even knows if the few that were fired weren't simply damaged. Some of those french vehicles looked like they were literally dragged kicking and screaming through the bush by samils.

Another thing to consider is that they would have had to at some point land in G-5 range to be re-supplied and the recces had the fapla rear echelon well covered. Impala drivers would also salivate at the sight of any MI series in the skies as it was probably the only thing (slightly) slower than them.

MI24's might have had the edge in spotting units on the ground, because they're so slow. The migs either came in too fast and low or too high to see anything. Sometimes they would just bomb ashonas hoping to hit a water bowser.

Hrmnn:


That's an interesting photo of a FAPLA Hind.

According to one Soviet advisor's account during the Angolan war FAPLA preferred using Mi-17 Hips with unguided rockets in lieu of the Hind, despite the fact they weren't nearly as effective. The reason was because the Hinds were considered so valuable they were all stored on major air bases in central locations like Luanda. If they were needed for an op, they would fly in, do their thing, then fly back to their base.

This meant that district commanders never had regular and direct access to the Hinds, so of course they weren't utilised to the full extent of their capabilities. If they had, I have a feeling ops like Askari and Moduler would have been a hell of a lot more difficult. A squadron of Hinds in competent hands would've been easily capable of taking out a column of Ratels, especially given the shortage of man portable SAMs at the time, and disappear before anything like an Impala or a Mirage could be called in to counter them.

On the other hand, the Hinds were expensive and considered much more difficult to replace than a Hip, so given the inexperience of many FAPLA district commanders it's possible the senior Air Force commanders were unwilling to risk placing them in their hands. I do not agree with this logic but can understand the rationale.

It's also possible that by confining the Hinds to a few very well-protected bases the risk of sabotage and damage due to UNITA raids was mitigated.

Angolan Air Force Hinds:

The original concept was for a single engine (ATAR) The story goes that the new Chief of SAAF gen. changed it to a twin, because he was a ex Buccaneer driver and wanted the new plane to have a heavier attack role. Originally it would have been a very similar to, yet upgraded, version of the mirage 2000. If it wasn't for sanctions we would have probably ended up with a fleet of 2000's anyway.

My personal belief is that CAVA was more of a RnD exercise. We simply did not have the economic muscle to develop a fighter from scratch.
The Mirage F1 would have been next in line to be upgraded after the Cheetah C.
The only reason it wasn't chosen as a base for the Cheetah was that we couldn't withdraw them from SWA to do the upgrade as it would have left our airspace virtually undefended, so they used the old Mirage III airframes that were at the end of their lifespan anyway. The F1 is a much more formidable aircraft than the Mirage III in every aspect and would have been competitive to late model F16's on paper if it was put through a upgrade.

A super mirage F1 armed with a new Elta/Reutech avionics suite and armed with all the AA / AG weaponry that Kentron had in the works would have been very formidable in Southern Africa. Even against Sukhois. We would have ended up with 100+ fighters armed with A-Darter, R-darter,T-Darter, Mupsaw, Torgos, Umbani etc. More than a match for a couple dozen Sukhois who had limited (and vulnerable) air bases to operate from. The weaknesses of the SNECMA Atar 09K50 could have been minimised by utilizing better design and composites to stretch more performance out of the F1 airframe.

GreenandGold:


No one is actually sure about that.. According to some alleged engineer who worked there, the project was initiated a big double engine because South Africa didn't have access to powerful engines to produce an agile single engine craft.

Then they spent too much time on how it should look like, the avionics and forth. Apparently the Israelis stalled the whole process because they wanted to work a bit longer (the pay and the beer was good). Then later came the French team who had worked on a botched Saudi funded prototype also changing the design to resemble the French mirage.

Then more French arrived with Rafale blueprints. Before everyone knew it, the Cubans were out of Angola the Soviet Union went broke and South Africa was talking all-inclusive elections.

Another useful feature of this concept is the ability to shield the RCWS from damage caused by moving through heavy bush. You'd be surprised how much damage trees can do to a vehicle.
All these new RCWS will have their fancy bits ripped to pieces in dense bush.

MikeCZA:
Hehehe would like to hear 61Mech's opinion on this system deployed in COIN ops.

Proposed SAAF Augusta with 20mm gamma

frumentius:
My favourite LUH in the SAAF arsenal.

Some of them would start a body roll at certain speeds on the highway. Kind of like a speed wobble on a bike. Inexperienced drivers would overcompensate and you'd end up off road. Hit a ditch and you roll.

Hrmnn:


I heard they had a tendency to roll into corners. Supposedly it had to do with the top heavy nature of the design.

The Rhino and Bulldog were later developments on the Buffel which were much improved. By then the Mamba was entering service though so both were not introduced in large numbers.

Drivers would have been black too. By the time you're ready to deploy after doing section/platoon level coin, the drivers in your intake should be qualified. Driving a buffel is not that hard as long as you are aware of the body roll at certain speeds and don't panic.

Damn things nearly killed as many guys in accidents than it saved from mines. Horribly flawed vehicle. We once had one drive into a Pigshit dam on a farm. Guys were taking turns throwing up while we tried to dig it out... Charming evening that was!!
They should have just build a "shorty" Casspir on a unimog chassis from the start (which is basically what a Mamba is)

ActivateKruger:


I think the discontinuation of the Buffel service was by its own design. The driver seats separate from the rest of the rifleman, if you think that most of the drivers would have been white and the riflemen would (after 94) be black. Seeing a white dude driving black dudes around wouldn't make a great image.

SADF were still running Buffels up to 94'
After that most of them were converted to Mambas i suspect.

ActivateKruger:


South Africans haven't used Beffels since the late 80s and they were mostly with the now defunct SWATF, 101 and 32 Batallion. These could have been refurbished and sold/donated.

Correct
The parts were shipped using a Portuguese helicopter buy as a cover. Apparently someone in Portugal made a huge profit as SA overpaid massively for the engines and airframes.
What the SAAF ended up with was basically a Puma airframe with composite parts and a new Makila turboshaft engines.
It actually outperforms even the newer super pumas.

jln115:

Romania supplied the air frames for the Oryx.

Those are Ratel 60's.
The command ratel has a matlet for the 12.7mm similar, but smaller than the 20mm's mantlet. You'll see it stick out regardless of whether or not the gun is mounted. The idea is to make the command ratel look like a Ratel 20 for obvious reasons.

The officers are located in the crew compartment on lazy chairs and buried in maps and radios. (Cooler box with steaks and beer are at the back door.)
These are later models of the 60's turret with raised copulas to mount laser rangefinders and night vision.

SANDF Ratels generally only mount weapons if they're going to be fired. You can go for months at a mechanised unit before seeing a ratel with a gunbarrel.

jln115:

Those aren't Ratel 60s though, they are the command version of the Ratel.....however they are missing their 12.7mm gun. @frumentius

What are they called now ?
As I understand 61 disbanded.

frumentius:
61Mech, your old unit entering Durban for Armed Forces Week.

Mmmmm... Reminds me of somewhere I've been.

Henry24o:
AMISOM Somalia


Uganda

Where were the nuke weaponising program located on that site ?
I believe it was called Advena.

frumentius:
I'm so jealous right now. A colleague is spending the entire week working out of here.