State-owned broadcast signal distribution company Sentech is in the market for autonomous drones to patrol South Africa’s borders. Sentech envisages a fleet of drones in a meshed network that co-ordinate with towers on the ground to spot illegal activity and alert operators. Ideally its drones will be capable of otherRead More →
In five rounds, an artificially-intelligent agent showed that it could outshoot a human. The never-ending saga of machines outperforming humans has a new chapter. An AI algorithm has again beaten a human fighter pilot in a virtual dogfight. The contest was the finale of the U.S. military’s Alpha Dogfight Challenge, anRead More →
Late last year, the United States Air Force awarded seven separate companies components of a massive multi-year US$ 6.4 billion contract for the provision of ‘Red Air’ adversary air combat training. There are useful lessons to be learned for Africa. While notable for its size, ‘Red Air’ was an expectedRead More →
Every year in September an emotional ceremony is held at the Katyn Monument in the James and Ethel Gray Park in Johannesburg to commemorate the anniversary of the historic South African Airforce relief flights over Warsaw. 2019 was the 75th Anniversary of this massive air transport effort. The annual ceremonyRead More →
Several African air arms have recently been modernising their transport fleets through acquisitions or reactivating idle fleets. Two visitors to South Africa are indicative of this. Lanseria saw two new notable arrivals in military transport aircraft during August: a Chinese manufactured Shaanxi Y-8F-200 of the Jeshi la Anga la WananchiRead More →
Twenty two thousand flying hours. Think for a moment, of how much in terms of training, exercising, and operational flying it would allow for. Now consider this: That’s how many funded hours have been cut from the South African Air Force’s budget compared to a decade ago. Ten years ago,Read More →
