30 FlightCom Magazine
A ground crew of 4-6 personnel supported
each system.
The entire system was designed to be
easily deployable by a C-130B Hercules
and set up within four hours. The system
included the ground station, control dish,
purpose-built rapid deployment containers
for the air vehicles, starter packs and
maintenance and flight preparation tents.
Between 1987 and 1991, 10 Squadron
operated five different variants of the
Seeker, ranging from the original Seeker
2B through to the Seeker 2C, 2CL, 2D and
the final Seeker 2E, with changing engine
options providing better performance and
big jumps in the quality of the on-board
cameras.
In 1991, with the end of the Angolan
War, 10 Squadron was disbanded and the
SAAF’s remaining Seekers were transferred
to Kentron, which began operating the
system and its successors on contract for the
SAAF.
Although 10 Squadron was disbanded
and the SAAF ceased to own and operate
UAVs directly, there is far more to the story
of South African UAVs. The late 1980s and
early 1990s were something of a golden era
for the local industry, with development
occurring at a breakneck pace.
One of the most interesting
developments in this era was the foray
into stealth, as a response to the SAAF’s
High-speed Reconnaissance Drone (HRD)
Technology Demonstrator Programme. The
first experiments involved the Flowchart
series of technology demonstrators (a
Flowchart 2 is on display at the SAAF
Museum, AFB Swartkop) before the Seraph
design was finalised between 1996 and 1998.
The system’s statistics were impressive
for the time. They were able to fly 1,300
km at Mach 0.83 at 40 000 ft, carrying an80 kg payload of either optical cameras,
a synthetic aperture radar or electronic
surveillance sensors. Development was
well-advanced by 1997 but severe South
African defence budget cuts killed the
SAAF’s HRD programme and with it the
Seraph’s prospects of final development.
Foreign interest did not materialise into
sales.
The concept was briefly resurrected in
the mid-2000s as the Seraph II Unmanned
Combat Aerial Vehicle (UCAV) design
armed with Mokopa missiles, but it never
went beyond the paper stage.
The Seeker I system was more
successful. It evolved into the Seeker II
which had a vastly-improved high-tech
Ground Control Station and antenna setup,
making deployment even simpler than
before. This allowed for additional mobile
ground stations that could be placed closer
to the patrol area and receive control
handed over from the main ground station
to extend effective range beyond line of
sight. Additional payloads, such as the
Avitronics (now part of Saab) Electronic
Surveillance Package (ESP) nose-mounted
sensor array capable of identifying and
categorising all radio and radar emissions
in a wide area, were integrated. The Seeker
II system proved to be a hit for Kentron (by
then part of Denel) with a number of export
sales around the world.
In the 1990s a new company, Advanced
Technologies and Engineering (ATE)
emerged on the scene. While UAVs were
not its main focus, it soon developed an
impressive capability in its production
and design and eventually won the South
African Army tender to provide an
unmanned artillery observation system
with their Vulture system. What made the
Vulture so attractive was its innovativezero-length launching and recovery systems
which used a vacuum tube launcher and
a large net lander to allow the UAVs to
be operated deep in the bush without any
need for a runway. Today ATE has become
Paramount Advanced Technologies, part
of the Paramount Group, and continues to
offer a wide range of UAVs from micro-
UAVs such as the 3.5 kg Kiwit (sold to an
unnamed Asian country for use by their
special forces) through to the larger Sentinel
and Mwari.
Not to stand still, Denel unveiled a
medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE)
UAV at the Africa Aerospace and Defence
exhibition in 2004, offering range and
performance at such a level that it was at
one stage even proposed as an option for the
SAAF to patrol out to the far reaches of its
extended economic zone (EEZ). But as with
the Seraph, South African state funding was
not forthcoming and no foreign partners
were willing to join the company in its
development, so the project was stillborn.
Using company money, Denel then
took a long-hard look at the Seeker II and
improved nearly every aspect of it to create
the Seeker 200 and a 30% larger version
called the Seeker 400.
The latter is the most interesting. Its
endurance has been extended to 16 hours to
allow over 10 hours loiter time, and it features
automated flight operations, including
take-off and landing, has a 100 kg payload
capability and is equipped with underwing
hard points for air-to-surface missiles such
as the Denel Dynamics Mokopa or Denel
Dynamics Impi – a first for Denel. The
armed variant has been designated the
Snyper, to differentiate it from the unarmed
Seeker 400 for those customers slightly
skittish about the association.
The Seeker 400 also brings about
another chapter in the South African Air
Force’s long association with UAVs, as
there have been reports that the SAAF has
approved the acquisition of a number of
Seeker 400 systems and the re-establishment
of 10 Squadron to operate them. For the first
time in 24 years, the SAAF will once again
operate its own UAVs.
It is hoped that the South African
defence industry can continue to remain a
world leader in UAV and UCAV systems,
despite the vast increase in competition
from all corners of the globe. There’s an
opportunity, to be discussed in part 2 of this
article, to get in on the ground-floor of what
may prove to be an explosion in the use of
UAVs by Africa’s armed forces.ÞBELOW: IAI Scouts were operated under the RPV designator in the SAAF 10 Squadron.