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The South African Electronic Warfare Association |
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Aardvark Roost |
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Message from the President |
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August 2010
Helicopters play a vital role in today’s world. They deserve proper EW protection!
For everyone that contributed in making our second Little Crow conference of the year on the 21st of July such an enjoyable and successful event, a huge thank you!
To personnel of the EW Centre that acted as hosts for the conference - a special word of thanks. Your selection of the South African Air Force (SAAF) Museum as the venue and your organization of the event were excellent. You did the SAAF and the Aardvark Roost proud.
It was also heartening to see so many people from the EW community attending the conference. It is greatly appreciated because without your participation such events cannot be a success.
The visit to the museum prior to the conference was a high light. Having the opportunity to again view the EW self-protection system installations of so many now retired aircraft, brought back many memories of those stressful, demanding and exciting times. This plus the live in-flight flare decoy dispensing demonstration of the Oryx helicopter, prompted the message for this month.
The October 2009 message “The changing external environment has shifted platform priorities for EW self-protection” stressed from an Air Force perspective, the need to protect support aircraft.
In areas of conflict where peacekeeping missions are conducted, transport aircraft are required to firstly deploy the peacekeeping forces and secondly, to support and keep them supplied afterwards.
Helicopters on the other hand, provide tactical mobility and a rapid reaction capability to aid people in distress within the area of operations. History has taught us how vital it is to win the hearts and minds of people subjected to the atrocities of warring parties. Being able to protect people and come to their aid when they are in need, plays a big part in achieving this. The versatility of helicopters makes them particularly suitable to realize this, especially where poor or non-existent infrastructure prevents land vehicles from fulfilling this task.
The problem with peacekeeping is however that if any of the adversaries sense that they are not achieving their selfish ambitions for power through the peace process, they often revert back to irregular warfare tactics. Peacekeeping forces then often become a target as they “stand in the way” of the dissidents to gain the upper hand.
Helicopters play a significant role in the peacekeeping process that also makes them a symbol of hope. This however makes them lucrative targets as the shooting down of a helicopter has high impact value on the minds of people. Ruthless factions that will stop at nothing to achieve their power hungry aspirations have shown willingness to take risks to accomplish this.
As part of the fighter community in the 1970s and ‘80s, we were always thankful that there actually were other pilots who wanted to fly helicopters! We were of the opinion that there are just two kinds of airplanes i.e. fighters and targets! (Attack helicopters were just targets with a bad attitude!!).
Well, after accumulating some grey hair “of wisdom”, one realizes that this was a somewhat one sided point of view! If one considers the astonishing versatility of helicopters, one has to admit that they are just amazing pieces of machinery. They have earned the respect of the world as fantastic rescue, war fighting, fire fighting and specialist transport machines to name only a few of the roles they fulfill with distinction.
Helicopters however mostly operate within range of ground fire and MANPADS missiles. They have the further disadvantage of being relatively slow which prolongs the engagement time against them – not to mention how vulnerable a hovering helicopter is! As we know, helicopters also have many moving parts that make them not so good in absorbing battle damage.
The crews that operate them often do so with unbelievable skill, tenacity and courage. They and the passengers they carry therefore deserve all the protection they can get when things start to go wrong.
EW self-protection systems have improved tremendously over the last decade and go a long way to enhance the survivability of helicopters in hostile environments. We should therefore ensure that our helicopter platforms are properly equipped with suitable EW self-protection systems whenever they are deployed in areas where the possibility exist that it could become hostile.
Regards and take care,
Gerrie Radloff (President of the Aardvark Roost)
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