At more than R700 million, revenue from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research’s (CSIR’s) Defence and Security Cluster amounted to a fifth of all CSIR income in the 2024/25 financial year, indicating strong performance from the cluster amid growing local and international demand.
Total group operating income amounted to R3.543 billion in 2024/25, exceeding the CSIR’s target of R3.1 billion and seeing an improvement from the R3.179 billion recorded in 2023/24, according to the latest CSIR annual report.
Dr Motodi Maserumule, CSIR Group Executive for the Advanced Production and Security division, speaking at the Council’s annual roundtable late last year, said the total revenue from the Defence and Security Cluster was about R739 million for 2024/25.
Sipho Mbhokota, Executive Manager of the Defence and Security Cluster, said CSIR defence and security research and development mainly supports the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) but also covers civil security issues and cyber security – the latter is a big challenge as the world moves to become a digital society.
Some of the key aerospace and defence focus areas include wind tunnel testing, vehicle mobility, radar, electronic warfare, etc. This is mainly for the SANDF – “our primary client that has supported us and we have supported them,” Mbhokota said. Radar projects include the new Ground-Based Surveillance and Classification Radar, the Quadome surveillance radar (developed in conjunction with Hensoldt South Africa and ordered by the UK’s Royal Navy), and passive radar technology (US-based Adler Aerospace recently signed a license agreement for the CSIR’s passive radar technology). On the electronic warfare side, the CSIR and Sysdel collaborated to support development of the Acepod (Airborne Countermeasure and ELINT) pod for the South African Air Force.
Other initiatives supporting the SANDF include the design and testing of its new camouflage uniform, launching a feasibility study for the life extension of the SA Army’s Ratel infantry fighting vehicle, and integrating manual armoured turrets onto Mamba Mk III armoured personnel carriers.
Mbhokota explained that the Defence Cluster houses a sizeable staff complement, with 400 staff including 330 engineers/technical staff. As a whole, the CSIR employs about 2 300 people.
Although the SANDF is the CSIR’s main defence client, South Africa’s defence budget has been shrinking and so the CSIR is supplementing this with international income. According to Mbhokota, “international income is quite large and important for us.” International contracts have been supplementing income to a “significant” degree, maintaining expensive capabilities such as the wind tunnels.
In order to promote its capabilities, the Defence and Security Cluster has been taking part in local and international exhibitions, such as the Africa Aerospace and Defence (AAD) exhibition (Pretoria), IDEX (United Arab Emirates), and ADEX (South Korea). Early this year it will be at the World Defence Show in Saudi Arabia.
