HELMOED ROMER HEITMAN
FUTURE FORCE DESIGN
Nongqai – Helmoed Römer Heitman – 15 April 2026
Key Words: Helmoed Romer Heitman, Nongqai, National Security in South Africa, Conflict, War, SANDF.
Abstract: The political and national security situation in South Africa and Africa is difficult to predict with certainty and surity. Nongqai’s National Security correspondent Helmoed Romer Heitman analyses Future Force Design constructs in a period of political and econonic instability.
The political and strategic situation in the world and in Africa is extremely fluid, as are:
- Trends in the political utility and the nature of conflict and war;
- Potential belligerents, from regular armies to criminal gangs with military capabilities;
- Operational and tactical developments;
- The nature of weapons and equipment.
This makes it impossible to predict with certainty when or where challenges or threats might arise or what form those challenges or threats might take. Any strategy and force design will always be a work in progress and a starting point from which force concepts and designs will evolve to meet the demands of an evolving strategic environment.
Considering the capabilities that will be required of the Defence Force in the context of South Africa’s role in Africa and the realities of the African theatre of operations, it is clear that the Defence Force will:
- Always be a small force in a large theatre; and may at times have to:
- Deploy and sustain forces over extended strategic distances;
- Conduct operations over great operational and tactical distances;
- Face very varied threats, some in quick succession, some simultaneously;
- Conduct complex operations in complex geographic and social terrain; and
- Conduct operations together with other, often very different, forces.
An Agile, Evolving, Adaptable and Resilient Defence Force
Those realities demand a Defence Force that is:
- Intellectually agile, able to understand the evolving strategic situation and derive from it the key implications for South Africa and for the Defence Force;
- Continuously evolving concepts, doctrines, organization and training to keep ahead, or at least abreast, of developments;
- Adaptable, able to adapt promptly and quickly to sudden, unforeseen challenges and threats; and
- Resilient, able to recover quickly without loss of cohesion from missteps and setbacks.
Open Architecture Defence Force
The need for a continuously evolving and adaptable Defence Force demands what may best be termed an ‘open architecture’ Defence Force, able to quickly and without undue disruption of operational capability:
- Adopt new concepts and doctrines;
- Bring into service new weapons and equipment;
- Adjust to operating with other armed forces, police forces and intelligence services;
- Mesh operations with other government agencies and allied and host nations;
- Mesh operations with international and regional bodies; and
- Mesh operations with non-governmental organisations.
A3 – ‘Appropriate, Adequate, Affordable’
Given the inevitable funding constraints on defence in time of peace, force design must focus on developing a Defence Force that is:
- Appropriate to the strategic situation;
- Adequate to existing challenges and threats and foreseeable contingencies; and
- Affordable.
Appropriate: The Defence Force must be appropriate to the defence and security needs of South Africa in respect of its:
- Structure: The balance among the combat services and the balance between them and the supporting services and divisions;
- Organization: Unit and formation organisations optimized for dispersed high-mobility, high-tempo operations;
- Composition: The balance between the regular and reserve components;
- Doctrine: To cover conventional defence and expeditionary operations and campaigns;
- Equipment: Equipment suited to deterrence and to expeditionary operations.
- Training: Preparing all ranks for a wide range of operations and to be able to adjust promptly and quickly to new tactical developments; and
- Education: Preparing all ranks, but particularly the officer corps, to keep ahead of the evolving nature of war, the conduct of war and new equipment and systems.
Adequate: The Defence Force must be adequate to meet the demands likely to be made of it: An inadequate defence force is a waste of state resources at best, and a source of potentially fatal miscalculation at worst. The Defence Force must be adequate in terms of:
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- Strength, standing and mobilized, to discourage military adventures;
- Strength and personnel depth to sustain an extended expeditionary campaign;
- Logistic and technical support to enable effective operations;
- Reserves of ammunition, fuel, spares, rations, etc to sustain operations;
- Funding to allow proper training and maintenance; and
- Integral structures and systems focused on ensuring that doctrines, organization and equipment remain relevant as the strategic environment and the nature of war evolve.
Affordable: The question of what is affordable in times of peace is difficult. The decision rests with the political leadership but must be taken on the basis of sound military advice backed up by an efficiently managed Defence Department and Defence Force that rigorously eliminate:
- Genuine ‘military luxuries’ such as equipment that is ‘nice to have’ but not essential;
- Unnecessary duplication of capabilities and facilities; and
- Wasteful procedures, particularly unnecessarily extended and complex acquisition and procurement systems.
The decision what is a ‘luxury’ or ‘unnecessary duplication’ and when procedures or systems are ‘inherently wasteful’, will be difficult and fraught with risk, and must be considered in the light of practical experience and the experience of other defence forces.
Force Characteristics
Considering the military capabilities required of the Defence Force in the context of the theatre and likely or foreseeable operational deployments, it is possible to set out some essential force characteristics that will be critical across the Defence Force, at the intellectual, organizational, strategic, operational and tactical level:
- Agility – the ability to anticipate and pre-empt change, and to respond promptly, quickly and effectively to unforeseeable developments;
- Elasticity – the ability to extend an operation or campaign geographically and/or in time to meet an evolving situation;
- Flexibility – the ability to adapt deployments or operation to unexpected developments;
- Mobility – the ability to manoeuvre within a theatre of operations to develop an optimal operational or tactical situation, including logistic mobility;
- Lethality – the ability to neutralize or destroy enemy forces with minimum effort in the shortest possible time;
- Deployability – the ability to deploy effective force elements to distant theatres at short notice;
- Interoperability – the ability to operate in conjunction with allied forces with minimum preparation;
- Supportability – the ability to support deployed forces over extended periods, and the ability to support equipment effectively through its normal service life; and
- Resilience – the ability to recover promptly, quickly and smoothly from missteps and setbacks.
Mission Command: The Defence Force will only be able to develop, inculcate and exploit those characteristics if they are complemented by a mission-focused command concept:
- Established in doctrine at all levels;
- Properly reflected in command and control systems;
- Properly reflected in organizational structure;
- Continuously reinforced in the education and training of the military leadership and the civilian staff of the Department of Defence; and
- At the centre of officer career management, promotions and appointments.
Effective Intelligence Support: If those characteristics and mission-focused command are to be effectively applied, they must be complemented by intelligence that is:
- Based on broad and alert general surveillance of the strategic environment;
- Collected early and continuously, to a focused, mission-oriented collection plan;
- Promptly followed up to confirm accuracy and detail;
- Thoroughly analysed and annotated; and
- Promptly disseminated as widely as practicable.
The bottom line is that the Defence Force must be properly educated and trained to meet those requirements. That will demand officers, NCOs and other ranks with mental agility developed and sustained by a carefully thought through, continuous education, training and development programme. Developing that programme must be the starting point.
Helmoed Romer Heitman
- The Nongqai National Security Correspondent and Columnist Helmoed Römer Heitman has written and lectured on defence since 1978. He served in the SA Army reserve from 1970 to 1996, finally at the Long-Term Planning Division at Defence Headquarters. He has consulted to the Ministry of Defence, the Defence Force, political parties and defence industry companies, worked with the non-statutory forces and political parties in 1991/94 and during the 1995/96 Defence White Paper drafting and served on a work group of the 1997/98 Defence Review. He participated in Army Vision 2020 and doctrine development for the Rooivalk attack helicopter in 2005/06, drew up an airlift study for the Ministry of Defence in 2009, served on the Defence Review Committee in 2011/13, worked on through-life capability management in 2015/17, helped edit the Defence Acquisition Handbook and drafted the defence industry strategy in 2017, an intervention plan in 2019 and parts of the Aerospace and Defence Industry Master Plan in 2020.
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