No they weren’t, it’s like saying the Soviets are the masterminds of the J20 which was heavily inspired my a failed stealth plane but more copied from the American’s technology that was stolen
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Its the Atlas Cheetah not the IAI Cheetah that tells you who did the bulk of the design and of the manufacturing of the plane. Just because it used information gained from the ISR/ZA tech collaboration doesn’t make it an Israeli addition
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Exactly lol it was designed when ZA was still under sanctions. Made by Atlas and they later became Denel systems I believe. Interesting story though on how Israel “smuggled” all the schematics into south Africa for them to use.
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I say bulk instead of complete /fully for this reason. I believe some Israeli parts were used either to avoid sanctions (a bit like Russia today) or because of the plain fact that there aerospace industry was more experieced and reduced the demand of production that had to be done domestically. Likewise there may have been some Israeli participation in the design through either attaches or lent engineers.
There was not lol my grandfather Abraham Mayer worked for Atlas in the 70s and helped assemble the first Cheetah jets in South Africa. They only received technical hints about the IAI Lavi that they interpreted themselves to better design the Cheetah jet. All components where made in ZA assembled in ZA, but when they where getting up to the flight tests engineers from Israel came over to help finalize. Also to note the ZA air force already owned and operated a fleet of Mirage III.
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Thanks for the info.
I thought they would need some Western technology. Not even Israeli chips?
No sir you do realize that they where completely able to developed there own attach helicopter that could rival the Apache along with a set of indigenous ATGMs. They made weapons systems that could take out the latest soviet tech in Angola. ZA was a beautiful place with many great minds back in the day. Not so much today though lol.
Developed some of the best SAMs in the '90s, almost had one of the best MBTs in the world, one of the first APS in a Western counrty, one of the best IFV/ICVs ever and created a class of troop transport vehicle and I will give credit though to the Israelis who helped us develop our first locally made ATGM
I’m by no means doubting ZA’s technical ability but its rare that things are 100% domestic. Like for Missiles (ATGMs and SAMs) it wouldn’t be uncommon for chips sets to be outsourced but all other systems domestic (software, propulsion, seeker etc) that would still make it 95+% domestic. I use chips as an example as they are incredibly difficuilt to make and I would bet that despite being a major player US equipment would have a significant amount of Taiwanese chips. Those Chips may still be US designed though.
Yes chips maybe but I don’t know the specifics of the electrical components. Taiwan is the world leader in chips if I remember correctly.
For the Cactus it is South African with some French, who were more piggy backing.
Most of the missiles we developed were locally designed, exceptions to this are; ZT3A1, Cactus, V3A, V3S, R 73E (I can’t remember the SAAF service designation), V3E and maybe V3B.
This is only a fifth of the missiles we designed and used or almost used (there are many systems in development during the 80s going into the 90s that got cancelled e.g. the SAHVM (not the ground launched one but an AA missile that eventually got to Europe and became the Meteor missile), the ZA HVM (SAM), etc.
My point is the sourcing of individual components (seeker head, chip set etc) that make up the system (insert any missile thats ever been made) then the primary developer
The SAHV-3 is fully South African, many have talked about how if it went into service would have been a massive marketing selling boost and would have also shown not to underestimate the South African military (the SADF and not the useless SANDF)
Pretty sure the Umkhonto has taken a lot of stuff from the SAHV-3, so you could technically call it a modern variant of it, but this is going off-topic now
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What do you mean?
Are you certain that every single thing in the Cheetah down to the nuts and bolts was made in South Africa
That is not what I’m saying nor did I say that, I was talking about the missiles like in your question. If I said that the Cheetahs were fully domestic then I would be as dumb and be lying as much as anyone in the Kremlin, CCP or ANC
Ok whilst I purely used it as an example of a system and it was never the point I was making: Are you certain that every single thing in the SAHV-3 was made in South Africa
Not the machinery or people but the missile, definitely, it was heavily advertised during the 90s with complete domestic design being one of the selling points