2010 World Cup ‘Biggest Ever’ South African Military Deployment Special

The measures being put in place to keep visitors safe at next year’s FIFA Soccer World Cup in South Africa will include the biggest command and control operation yet undertaken by the South African military.

New means of countering asymmetrical attacks during peacekeeping and other situations were highlighted at the South African Joint Air Defence Symposium in Pretoria, where Colonel Amigo B. Louw of the South African Air Force (SAAF) told Digital Journal the upcoming operation:

Will be the biggest command and control deployment in the history of the defence force… it will be command posts and radars and sector control centres and so on. It will be the biggest deployment ever. That’s inclusive of the Bush War.

Louw explained that all available equipment would be used:

We’re making use of radars on the army side, we’re making use of civilian radars, everything. Our aircraft, police aircraft, civilian aircraft.

The match venues would be very well covered, Louw said. Explaining that most of South African airspace was “controlled airspace,” he added:

We will have controlled air space 50 nautical miles (c. 90 kilometres) around each and every venue. As soon as anyone wants to go into that area, he will have to have a flight plan, but aside from the flight plan, people will be screened. They will need to get authority, aside from the flight plan.

However, the idea wasn’t to make life difficult for civilian pilots:

We will give authority to most aircraft, except if we find through the screening process, that there’s a problem here.

Louw added that, except in Cape Town, a five nautical mile radius around stadiums would be an effective “no fly zone.” Speakers in the symposium made it clear that the SAAF needed to be ready not only to see off possible threats from terrorists or others at the 2010 Soccer World Cup, but also during peacekeeping operations, in which South Africa is heavily involved. Among possible threats, including against the World Cup, were those from “ambush marketers,” who could be expected to gatecrash venues, or from people with a cause, such as environmental activists or even the media. Colonel Louw said:

A guy wants to photograph the opening. He wants the opening but he wants to be the first and he wants to be over the stadium. So now he rents a helicopter to go over the stadium. Those are kinds of people that we must keep away now.

Although the symposium is titled the “Joint Air Defence Symposium 2009,” Louw stressed that the work of the Air Force was not actually “air defence.” He explained the correct term was “air space security”and that the SAAF would be assisting the police not only with security issues, but also with transporting policemen in the event of a riot, possible disaster relief and other non-traditional tasks. The symposium has attracted exhibitors and speakers from India, Germany, Botswana as well as South Africa.