Paratroopers and helicopters are to descend on several Bloemfontein suburbs from early on Friday morning as the first phase of one of the largest SA National Defence Force (SANDF) exercises in recent years kicks into gear.
Soldiers, medics and airmen under the direction of 43 SA Brigade have been preparing for Exercise Iron Eagle for months and arrived in Bloemfontein on Wednesday to receive orders and final training.
SANDF representative Lieutenant-Colonel Skillie le Roux on Thursday said Iron Eagle would consist of two distinct parts, namely an urban non-combatant evacuation operation (NEO) starting at 6am on Friday in Bloemfontein itself, code-named Black Hawk.
A separate relief operation at the Army’s Combat Training Centre (CTC) would get underway at Lohatlha on Monday. This phase would be called Peace Dove.
According to the exercise scenario, part of the drill will be conducted under the UN Charter’s Chapter 6 peacekeeping rules and partly under the more aggressive Chapter 8, which allows Lesotho-style interventions.
Black Hawk would start with 70 airborne troops pre-emptively seizing Tempe airport and its approaches.
Two companies of 128 each would descend elsewhere in the city to carry out a number of training missions.
Le Roux said Pathfinder scouts have been operating in the city to prepare the drop zones since Monday.
Once the Tempe airport was secured, it would be used as a ”safe harbour” for civilians evacuated there from other parts of the city during the NEO.
On Saturday morning the action would be at the Noordstad shopping mall, which would be the venue of a mock attack by 80 soldiers from 6 SA Infantry Battalion.
Supporting them would be a detachment from 4 Artillery Regiment as well as five Oryx and three Alouette transport helicopters.
The helicopters would be covered by two Rooivalk attack helicopters and two Impala light strike aircraft.
Several hundred school children had also been roped in to act as civilians and would be rewarded with helicopter flights on Saturday morning.
A 60-member composite platoon from 44 Parachute Regiment’s reserve component 2 and 3 Parachute Battalions would next carry out a ”grab operation” at the Fichardt Park high school where they would rescue 15 pupils and airlift them to the airport.
At 1pm 60 pupils at a Momedi school would have the same privilege and 30 minutes later 20 children at Fichardt Park primary school and 35 at Onze Rust would follow.
NEOs have been common in Africa. In 1998 US and French forces rescued their and other citizens from Kinshasa as forces under Laurent Kabila closed in on the city.
Twenty years previously French Foreign Legionnaires took the Democratic Republic of Congo (then Zaire) city of Kolwezi in a parachute assault to save expatriate mine workers and their families from Angolan-supported insurgents.
Although the exercise comes shortly before the SANDF is expected to deploy a reinforced infantry battalion of 1 500 to the DRC to police a recent peace accord there, Le Roux said the exercise was planned last year to better prepare the SA Army and did not imply any operational commitment.
If authorised by President Thabo Mbeki, the battalion was likely to depart for the eastern DRC in late October.
Iron Eagle is the second major exercise for the SANDF this year.
In June the SANDF held Exercise Golden Eagle, which tested the ability of the Air Force to protect the country’s airspace and support its sister services.
Le Roux said the Peace Dove phase of Iron Eagle involved forces coming to the assistance of a South African detachment cut-off by rebels during a peacekeeping operation.
A force including 256 paratroopers would be sent to their rescue.
During a UN intervention in Rwanda during its 1994 genocide, a Belgian patrol was cut off by extremists — and murdered. More recently, a Zambian contingent was disarmed and taken hostage by Revolutionary United Front rebels in Sierra Leone. Several were murdered. The majority were eventually rescued.
For this reason recent SANDF training scenarios have increasingly reflected the view that if fighting resumed during a peace support operation involving the SANDF, the military could become involved in limited intensity conventional conflict.
Another realisation was that volatile conditions in the region would not allow for sufficient warning to enable the significant expansion of military capabilities beyond a limited call-up of the reserve forces.
For this reason, Iron Eagle included reserve elements.
”Most SANDF operations will require a response time of three months or less. Operations will thus have to be conducted essentially with available forces,” a recent training analysis said. – Sapa