Twelve months after bringing their prospective vehicles to an SA Army exercise, and subsequently submitting bids for new vehicles, South African armoured personnel carrier (APC) manufacturers still await an Armscor successful bidder decision.
In January 2023, Armscor issued a Request for Information (SA Army/R/403/6) for a 2+8 seat APC capable of counterinsurgency operations with variable ballistic and mine protection able to defeat an 8 kg mine. Sixteen local defence companies were invited to respond, with eight doing so. The intention was to evaluate the different vehicles along the South African borderline in operational conditions in October/November and afterwards demonstrate the vehicles during Exercise Vuk’uhlome in November 2023.
However, this was postponed as Armscor revised specifications, reducing the combat weight specification as the original user requirement was mostly taken from that of the Badger infantry fighting vehicle for the SA Army, and this was not practical for the vehicles required for border patrol.
A Request for Bid (RfB) (ELWS/2024/71) was issued in July this year by Armscor. A bidders’ conference for the no-name project took place on 8 August, postponed from 31 July with answers to questions supplied a mere two days before the 23 August submission date. Armscor extended the submission date to 13 September with one reason seemingly due to “significantly changed” vehicle system requirements, according to James Kerr of Orion Consulting.
The tender, now long closed, is still under evaluation as of this month, according to Armscor. It is for the supply of 462 personnel carrier vehicles for use in counter-insurgency and other SA Army operations (210 Section variants, 144 Command variants, and 108 Ambulance variants.)
The participation at last year’s division exercise Vuk’uhlome II was seen by some in the South African defence industry as indicating a change in approach with a potentially quicker turnaround time in the product evaluation and bidder decision process. This appears not to be the case, with bidders expressing frustration at Armscor’s delays, changing requirements, and short timelines.
Kerr maintains the delivery dates set are “a stretch” with the first vehicles required two months after receipt of order to start testing. These, if approved, would provide a manufacturing baseline. Then, Kerr has it, 20 of each variant – 60 vehicles – are required by mid-March next year.
That looks unlikely as the Armscor response to a defenceWeb inquiry this month states bids are being evaluated with “any interested person” to be informed “once the final procurement process has been concluded”. No date is given when the 11 bidders can expect to find out which of their submissions has been successful.
The new APCs will replace the troop pack vehicles previously acquired for border patrol – over 400 Toyota Land Cruisers were originally bought for this purpose. National Treasury allocated R500 million in 2024/25 for the procurement of vehicles to replace the troop packs.
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