Given the current, and likely future, strategic circumstances in sub-Saharan Africa, South Africa urgently needs to re-equip its Special Forces and acquire air transportable light armoured vehicles for its army, defence analyst Helmoed Heitmann told Engineering News Online on Wednesday.

(In South Africa, the Special Forces are considered to be a strategic asset and thus an element of the South African National Defence Force, and not an element of the South African Army.)

"The immediate urgency is the Special Forces," he affirmed. "We need to expand the Special Forces. We need dedicated vehicles for them, better than the [current Jeep-like] Hornet. And we need dedicated aircraft and helicopters for them, with dedicated crews."

Earlier this year, a small force of South African Special Forces and airborne troops suffered heavy casualties in the Central African Republic's capital, Bangui, at the hands of a numerically far superior rebel force. South African troops currently serve with the United Nations peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of Congo and have been assigned to the reaction brigade specifically intended to fight rebels in the east of that country.

"For the South African Army, we need air transportable light armoured vehicles," he stressed. "We could upgrade existing turrets from the Ratel 20 and Ratel 90 armoured vehicles and mount them on a lighter vehicle, such as the RG34." (The Ratel 20 is the South African Army's current infantry fighting vehicle, armed with a 20 mm cannon, while the Ratel 90 is a fire support vehicle with a 90 mm gun. The RG34 is a product of South African company BAE Systems Land Systems South Africa.)

"However, in the medium term we need more modern vehicles," he added. "The army also needs a light, precision guided weapon, to deal with such targets as snipers and technicals [pick-up trucks armed with heavy machine guns, a favourite weapon of rebels in Africa, also used by some regular armies] while causing few, if any, civilian casualties."

Furthermore, the army needs its own unmanned air vehicles (UAVs), both tactical – that can be used to escort convoys in difficult terrain, for example – and miniUAVs (which can be carried, launched and operated by infantry). "The immediate priority would be a convoy escort UAV and a miniUAV for the Special Forces," he argued.

Heitmann was one of the speakers at the Land Forces Africa 2013 conference in Pretoria on Wednesday.