The South African Navy (SAN) has ordered what appears to be a R42 million resupply of Umkhonto surface-to-air missiles (SAM) for its Valour-class frigates. The order, for R41 986 000, was placed last week Thursday. South Africa in November 2005 joined a handful of nations to have fielded a functional operational anti-missile air defence systems with the successful firing of the Umkhonto-IR from aboard the Valour-class frigate SAS Amatola. Since then the SA Navy has regularly fired the 125kg, 12km-range weapon that carries a 23kg warhead, most recently this year during Exercise Good Hope IV, a joint multinational undertaking with German, where the missile was also successfully fired against a surface target. “We heard it went very well,” Denel Dynamics CE Jan Wessels told defenceWeb in April last year. “The system has now been in service with the Navy for three years and all the feedback we get is very positive, it is really performing as advertised and more.”
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