"The high cost of the Airbus move", by Helmut Stinkenbottom? Is this the article you are referring to? The only "re-getiating power" was to go from 57 billion rand to 60 billion. The changes have always been upwards in price. Show me ONE example of a price going down over time and I'll run around the park dressud up as mickey mouse.....

@ Eugene. Your argument is the same as saying you have to buy a 2.5 million Aston Martin now because for the next week there is a price reduction of R500 000 and if you don't we will miss the opportunity to buy a car that can do 300 kmh and 0 to 100 in 3 seconds for a good price. When all you can afford and in fact need is a Toyota Corolla.

@Eugene vh Read my email. the biggest threat to the stability of this country is from within. We need to sort out our own back yard before we go trying to sort out the rest of Africas problems. We need to be spending the money on crime prevention, job creation, Education, Aids, and improving the conditions and salaries of the defense personal. We cannot be spending this kind of money on a "good deal" for planes we do not need if our own troops are storming the union buildings because of lack of money to improve the bad conditions of our bases here at home. Just Remember what got Zimabawe into a mess. It started with Mugabe sending troops to the DRC on a foreign adventure to "Peace keep" in a war that Zimbabwe could not afford and had nothing to do with. It was costing him 10 million USD a day! It depleted his foreign exchange reserves to the point that Zimbabwe could not afford to buy fuel. This started riots and set Zimbabwe on the downward spiral from which it has still not recovered.We need to spend money to secure our own borders before we try and sort out Sudan's and Burundi's borders and for this we do not need 47 billion's worth of heavy lift aircraft. We need a highly motivated well trained and equiped army not one who storms the Union buildings because there is no money to pay them.What happens if next time there will be an attempted coup then what good will heavy lift transport planes be? Oh yes we can bring our troops home from Central Africa to quell it!

@Realist
Read the Article: "The high cost of the Airbus move" under Finance & Labour. Published on November 08 2009 at 11:42AM to understand what the cost of canceling the Airbus deal is really costing SA. It's easy to make a hasty decision and not think through all the implications. It's easy to score cheap political points and to seem to do the right thing to carry favor with people. Brownie points have been scored, but we are deeper into the real brown stuff. We had the power in our hands (as part of the launch customers) to re-negotiate the deal, now we have nothing. In the true Real World cool heads needs to think about all possible outcomes before making decisions.

SA needs a heavy lifter, be it the C130J or the C17 series. Its not just the military aspect that needs considering here but the humanitarian one too. SAs transports have far greater humanitarian usage than solely military. 10-15 airframes would just suffice, allowing for a 60% availability. Good cancellation but things need to be quickly moved on to secure the right replacement for the worn out C130Bs.

@Eugene VH The institute for strategic studies says that the imediate threat to peace and stabilty this country faces is from within. We have instability in the townships due to service delivery, rotting hospitals, aids killing more people per day than any war, 50 murders per day which is more than Iraq and Afghanistan and they are countries at war! Eskom bringing this country to the brink of an economic crisis due to lack of power generation.Basically SA is at war with itself due to crime, unemployment and mismanagement. We should be budgeting the 47 billion to sort these problems out not to buy military transports to sort out the rest of Africas problems We should not be trying to ship oryx helicopters and other military equipment to other parts of Africa, trying to keep peace in areas that will never be at peace. We need to sort out our problems first before this country descends into another Zimbabwe. Yes we need a defence force but not one that can project military power into Central Africa. We have no reason to be there. I was not suggesting we buy the C17 at all just the cheaper C130-J it is perfect for our transport needs as a maritime patrol aircraft it is used by the US Coast Guard and they have a bigger coast than we do. It is also well cabable of servicing our immediate defence needs its predecessor did a sterling job in Angola. as for air to air refuling the new SAAB grippen can fly from AFB Mokhado to Cape Town without refueling. In any case the C130J is an excellent refueler as well, and is used in this role in Afghanistan and Iraq.The A 400 project is doomed as Italy has already pulled out and so is the UK thinking of doing the same. Why should SA stay in a progam that is only going to drain more and more funds away from our coffers when those 2 countries have already seen the writing on the wall?
We need to sort out our own country's problems before we try and sort out Africa's or else in some future date we may be needing some foreign peace keeping force...

@ Realist The point is that SA urgently requires to update our Airlift capability. We are leasing planes currently to transport loads our current C-130's can't handle. We have too few transporters as it stands and the existing fleet is approaching end-of-life. The fact is that the A400M would have helped us to get items, like the Oryx helicopter, to where they are needed much easier than a C-130 can. The Boeing C-17 is too expensive. Also the A400M would have given us Airborne Tanker capability again, a force multiplier for a small fighter force such as what we have. And the Airbus would have been good for long range search and rescue aircraft. That we need new transporters will not be denied by anyone in the Air Force. They design a new aircraft based on experience. Thus thought went into giving the A400M capabilities that the C-130 couldn't provide. We need to get something soon. What I'm getting at is that the price as given to the nation hasn't been explained fully and we will have to spend money on new transporters in any case. We haven't spend R40 billion, so we haven't saved R40 billion to give to Eskom. Another thing is that you can't put your head in the sand and say that we don't need them now as we are not in war. That's like me saying we don't need a police force since I haven't been attacked in the last 5 years. You need to plan for the future as well. You don't just buy these equipment one day and use them the next. Training and standard operating procedures takes time to develop. And you need them working immediately when the need arises.

Chuene gone, Maroga gone, Airbus gone and NHI on the backburner- All this good news at once= hope for SA! Lekker, man!

Gosh, oh my word. I just lost my bet with myself that Airbus woud fly supremely over our skies. How could I be so wrong?

Peter T, my man. It was not a ablunder it was a decision to upgrade the military, the cost escalated because of delayed production. Zuma's admin is scoring political point with an uninformed decision, bring to mind the "shoot to kill" statement. the fact is Zuma admin are political amateurs who will do everything to score points by saying the right thing at the right time. they dont have a clue how to take this country forward. half a million jobs hehehehe