South African Indigenous Naval Projects?

[Graugrun]

This is the cumulation of our successfull project to build our own periscopes for our Daphne submarine upgrade many years ago. First Ziess bought shares in our Eloptro, then Hensoldt bought out that share.

The SERO-250 is completely South African designed and built - as the article states it has been installed in the submarines of the South Korean, Greek, Portuguese, Turkish and various other navy's submarines (Type 209 and similar).

Hensoldt South Africa to supply submarine periscope to South American navy​

https://www.defenceweb.co.za/featur...y-submarine-periscope-to-south-american-navy/

 

[kaiserbill]

On another thread, this link to an article was posted:

An Alternative to the SA Navy's Corvettes [Institute for Security Studies, 1996-10-01]

The passage I'm interested in is this:

Since the early 1970s the South African Navy has been trying to replace its type 12 Whitby class anti-submarine frigates which were bought under the Simon's Town Agreement in the early sixties.​

​

There were several projects: Taurus in co-operation with Portugal; Burlap, a local design; Picnic in France, and during the last five years two further attempts. All these projects, except Picnic which was cancelled by France in 1978, were cancelled due to the lack of funds.​

I assume "Picnic" was a project name?
Was Picnic the A69 Aviso programme?

 

[Hood]

By the dates I would assume that it was the A69 programme.

 

[Graugrun]

Adding to my previous post #154

 

[BLACK_MAMBA]

Something I noticed reading the IPMS document @kaiserbill shared some years ago - there was mention of a reprofiling of the Daphne stern deck area around the torpedo tubes. The description is that the area was streamlined.

S99 as preserved today still has the standard Daphne stern. S98 I noticed did not have it and was changed somewhere. The whole stern torpedo area was totally stripped shortly after her retirement so photos are very rare.

Photo 1 is the standard Daphne stern of S99.
Photo 2 is the reprofiled S98. It is unclear if the area was streamlined thus making the torpedo tubes more prominent, or if they were somewhat flared out for some reason? But the difference is clear.

Hope more info or pictures can be found. She was supposedly on display in 1997 during the SA Navy 75th celebrations held in the Waterfront. The IPMS document mentions observing the new rear here.

 

[kaiserbill]

Some interesting info regarding dates concerning some of the projects discussed earlier.
These would relate to the indigenous submarine and frigate programmes.
This is from Richard Young's deposition during the investigation into the later arms deal.
He also uses the correct project definitions (at the time) of frigate and corvette, even though the "corvette" was much larger, and is now known as a frigate. Politics, huh...
It's a very long document, and I haven't read it all. These are some of background details earlier in the document, which is linked here:

Aide Memoire : Richard Young

8. I personally have and have had since 1992, a security clearance of Top Secret. Before that, since 1976, I have had a security clearance of Secret. Therefore both the company and I are cleared to handle the project documentation relating to the Corvette acquisition under Project Sitron and other related SA Navy projects.

Back to Table of Contents

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History - My Own Involvement

9. In 1983, South Africa started developing combat suites for naval vessels. A combat suite is a set of systems that enables a naval vessel to engage in naval combat.

10. In 1985, I starting working for a company called Trivetts-UEC (Pty) Ltd, then owned by the Tongaat-Hulett Group and was personally involved in developing a combat suite for our submarines. This company later became UEC Projects (Pty) Ltd, which later became Altech Defence Systems (Pty) Ltd, then 100% owned by the South African electronics group Altech Ltd. I left UEC Projects (Pty) Ltd in early 1992 in order to continue my academic studies.
History - Combat Suite Development in South Africa

27. Previously, the SA Navy (SAN) had realised that, for strategic reasons, the country needed to develop sophisticated, indigenous Combat Suites for both surface and sub-surface combat vessels.

28. Once the previously-mentioned submarine combat suite project altered course in 1989, the SA Navy and Armscor started technology studies and system design on the frigate programme, also in 1989.

29. When this previous frigate acquisition programme commenced , i.e. Project Falcon with the Combat Suite part thereof being termed Project Frizzle, the aim there was also to move to a system architecture based on a databus, i.e. a computer data network, with the system architecture being based on a proper local area network, as opposed to a simple databus as was the case of the submarine combat suite.

30. I was involved in these technology studies and system design efforts while working at what was then UEC Projects (Pty) Ltd between 1989 and 1991. In fact, I was responsible for the network technology studies and technology demonstrator development, with these projects being successfully completed by the middle of 1991.

31. To circumvent the problems commonly encountered on modern warships where the ship’s systems employ high degrees of automation using electronics, as well as many high-power radiating transmitters and sensitive electronic sensors, the SAN specified the use of fibre optic cabling for the Combat Suite data network.

Back to Table of Contents

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History - The Patrol Corvette Combat Suite

32. After Project Falcon was cancelled in 1991, Project Sitron was initiated in 1993, this being the programme for the acquisition of Patrol Corvettes for the SAN (SAN PC).

33. For Project Sitron, the SAN, advised by Armscor, wanted and specified a :

"Combat Suite designed around the principles of distributed processing within independent functional modules physically integrated around a modern multirole redundant databus infrastructure linking the various system elements." Here I make reference to the Programme Plan for Project Sitron: Combat Suite - Classification Confidential dated 25th January 1995, hereinafter referred to as the Programme Plan(Annexure Axx).
"The Corvette Combat Suite shall be a modern, LAN-based Naval Combat System with a distributed processing architecture". Here I make reference to the SA Navy’s Patrol Corvette Combat Suite Requirements Specification -