SANDF members at Air Force Base Waterkloof in Centurion on 15 June 2025. Picture: Gallo Images/Sharon Seretlo South Africa faces no immediate threat of external attack, but the SA National Defence Force (SANDF) is impaired to the point that the country is in no position to repel one, defence analysts say. Even if the SANDF had not suffered a major loss of funding, critical capabilities and operational skills over the past decades, defence analyst Dean Wingrin said the US military is in a league of its own and would have less trouble dealing with the SA military than it did with the Venezuelan armed forces in the weekend strike.
“With the current state of the SANDF, we are not in a position to fend off any attack,” he said. South Africa’s position at the tip of Africa placed the US at a logistic disadvantage, but the US military could handle it as it has aircraft carriers at sea, long-range missiles and strategic bombers capable of operating from the continental US and Ascension Island in the mid-Atlantic. “We saw the severe hammering Iran received and it had large numbers of modern air defence systems and forewarning of strikes.
“Yet their military still suffered badly during the limited engagement,” he said. Wingrin said it was unrealistic to expect SA to fend off an attack if America engaged in regime change outside its new doctrine of focusing on dominance in the western hemisphere. He said SA should be looking at equipping and funding itself to compare with its African peers.
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It cannot afford to lose any more capability, nor should it. “The best defence for SA and its economy in the new world order is to re-evaluate its past practices and make wise political pronouncements and economic policies, putting non-alignment into practice,” Wingrin added. Helmoed-Römer Heitman, a defence expert, said SA’s modest submarine fleet may be far from an advantage against global military powers, but it could play a realistic deterrent role in forcing powerful actors to think twice before targeting the country’s waters.
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