The Test Flight and Development Centre is a unit of the

South African Air Force The South African Air Force (SAAF) is the air warfare branch of South African National Defence Force, with its headquarters in Pretoria. The South African Air Force was established on 1 February 1920. The Air Force saw service in World War II a ...

. It is a test flight and evaluation organisation. Due to

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

apartheid Apartheid ( , especially South African English: , ; , ) was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an ...

policies of the 1960s, a number of countries instituted an arms boycott against it. This forced the SAAF to create an indigenous flight testing and development capability to research new technologies and methods and update old ones, and in this light a former graduate of the

Empire Test Pilots' School The Empire Test Pilots' School (ETPS) is a British training school for test pilots and flight test engineers of fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft at MoD Boscombe Down in Wiltshire, England. It was established in 1943, the first of its type. ...

(ETPS) was appointed the SAAF's Chief Test Pilot in 1967 and tasked with improving and expanding the air force's test flying and evaluation capabilities. In 1974 another ETPS graduate took over, and was tasked with creating a specialised test flying and evaluation unit within the SAAF. The result was that the Test Flight and Development Centre was officially established on 10 August 1975 at

AFB Waterkloof Air Force Base Waterkloof is an airbase of the South African Air Force. It is situated on the outskirts of Pretoria, and is the SAAF's busiest airbase. The base's name means "water ravine" in Afrikaans and in Dutch. Despite the name, this base i ...

. Over the next few years until the imposition of the mandatory

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...

arms embargo against South Africa in 1977, additional pilots were sent to the ETPS and to EPNER in

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

to gain flight test experience and expertise. By 1979, the TFDC had grown large enough to merit the allocation of one of the hangar complexes at AFB Waterkloof, and in 1980 it established a satellite unit at Van Ryneveld Airfield in

Upington Upington () is a town founded in 1873 and located in the Northern Cape province of South Africa, on the banks of the Orange River. The town was originally called Olijvenhoutsdrift ('Olive wood drift'), due to the abundance of olive wood trees i ...

to conduct weapons release tests. Once the Denel Overberg Test Range near Bredasdorp on the southern Cape coast had been completed, the TFDC moved to an adjacent airfield, now known as AFB Overberg.

Aircraft Fleet

As of July 2011 TFDC's permanent fleet consists of: *1x Agusta 109 LUH - #4006 *1x SAAB Gripen D - #3901 *1x BAe Hawk - #250 *1x Atlas Oryx - #1200 Other aircraft are operated on temporary detachment from squadrons as well as manufacturers such as

Denel Denel SOC Ltd is a South African state-owned aerospace and military technology conglomerate established in 1992. It was created when the manufacturing subsidiaries of Armscor were split off in order for Armscor to become the procurement agency ...

Projects

Hawk trainer

The TFDC's largest running project was the operational evaluation of the BAe Hawk Mk.120 and certification of its Adour 951 turbofan engine.
Weapons integration was also performed, with the SAAF's series of pre-fragmented bombs. The programme is now largely complete, with one Hawk airframe remaining on strength with TFDC, for further tests. Hawk has entered SAAF service as of 2006.

Taurus missile

In 2001 and 2002 it assisted the

German Air Force The German Air Force (, ) is the aerial warfare branch of the , the armed forces of Germany. The German Air Force (as part of the ) was founded in 1956 during the era of the Cold War as the aerial warfare branch of the armed forces of West Ger ...

in the testing of the Taurus stand-off missile, for which two

Panavia Tornado The Panavia Tornado is a family of twin-engine, variable-sweep wing multi-role combat aircraft, jointly developed and manufactured by Italy, the United Kingdom and Germany. There are three primary #Variants, Tornado variants: the Tornado IDS ...

aircraft deployed a number of times to AFB Overberg from

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

with the help of a SAAF

Boeing 707 The Boeing 707 is an early American long-range Narrow-body aircraft, narrow-body airliner, the first jetliner developed and produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Developed from the Boeing 367-80 prototype, the initial first flew on Decembe ...

aerial tanker. In 2009 the Spanish Air Force performed integration tests of the Taurus missile on their F-18 Hornet fighters at TFDC.

Gripen

The TFDC received the SAAF's first

JAS 39 Gripen The Saab JAS 39 Gripen ( ; English: ''Griffin'') is a light single-engine supersonic multirole fighter aircraft manufactured by the Swedish aerospace and defence company Saab AB. The Gripen has a delta wing and canard configuration with rela ...

in 2006. The aircraft is flown through an extensive test programme, integrating weapons and SAAF specific avionics etc. During November 2007, the Gripen was shown publicly taking off loaded with eight 'dumb' bombs during weapons integration trials.

Luftwaffe Kormoran Anti Ship missile firings

During 2006 the German Air Force deployed six

aircraft to TFDC for live Kormoran anti ship missile firings with a

German Navy The German Navy (, ) is part of the unified (Federal Defense), the German Armed Forces. The German Navy was originally known as the ''Bundesmarine'' (Federal Navy) from 1956 to 1995, when ''Deutsche Marine'' (German Navy) became the official ...

task group in joint exercises with

n forces.Janes.com - Luftwaffe fires Kormorans in South African exercise
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References

External links

{{coord, 34, 33.27, S, 20, 15.04, E, region:ZA_type:airport, display=title Squadrons of the South African Air Force Military units and formations established in 1975 1975 establishments in South Africa