Time to cull Rooivalk?

The country's leading Afrikaans daily, Beeld, in an editorial on Tuesday said the time had come to decide the fate of the Rooivalk attack helicopter. It noted the government had decided to bail out near-bankrupt Denel and that part of the "substantial help" would be R640 million for the Rooivalk. Taking a dim view on the system's future, the paper said it was "gobbling up money" and no substantial contract was on the horison. A decade ago the helicopter was state of the art, but that was probably no longer the case. Two avenues remained: Finding buyers or closing the project down. "The latter option would be unfortunate as the helicopter represented the technological apex of South africa, but it is eating money badly needed elsewhere.

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