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Whisterplat’s military air-base near Capetown, the sight of Africa Aerospace & Defense – 2008 exhibition looked like a large golf club this morning.

There were so many journalists and VIP guests at the opening day that the direction of the exhibition had to “borrow” almost all of electro-cars in nearby golf-clubs. The territory of the Air-base is quite large what makes it rather difficult to visit all the pavilions in a single day. The golf cars turned out to be the only salvation, especially for TV-cameramen with their heavy-weight equipment.

An army of military men, businessmen and journalists occupied the exhibition early in the morning. As soon as the official opening of AA&D 2008 ended a large group of African generals headed straight to the pavilion of Russian arms exhibition under the aegis of Rosobornexport. Many of them gathered around the stand of FSUE “SRPE” Bazalt” - the best manufacturer of grenade launcher systems in the world. Bazalt’s representative deputy chief-designer Nikolay Sereda had a hard time answering all the questions.

“This is the first time we brought our newest items in Africa” – he said. “RPG-32 Hashim in particular, which was designed in accordance with the request of Jordanian Army. We also demonstrate our RMG multi-purpose rocket grenade for the first time here. RMG can completely destroy a 50 cm thick brick wall, a reinforced concrete wall and it can also penetrate 100 mm thick armor. Another peculiarity of this rocket is that it can destroy stone barriers and create a gap of appropriate size for an assault group to enter. We also demonstrate the cheapest grenade launcher in the world – RPG-28”.

At this exhibition FSUE “SRPE “Bazalt” demonstrates another of its new developments – a gliding bomb FAB-500 M62. This bomb can be dropped at the height of 10 km and after the release it glides for another 10 kilometers before hitting the target. The same path of development has been chosen by American manufacturers.

I can’t tell if the Americans borrowed that idea from Russians but strange things started to happen here at the exhibition. In the same pavilion, where Bazalt employees show their items, one of the foreign companies also demonstrates anti-tank weapon systems. Nikolay Sereda was rather puzzled when he saw grenades marked RPG-7 in English at the stands of other companies than “Bazalt”. He asked if the companies had a Russian license for the manufacturing of these grenades. However he was assured that it was their development. Russian arms developers decided to make some inquiries why the company demonstrated the item as their own.

Some other strange things started to happen with pre-advertised “Mirage-1” airplane used by South-African Air-Forces. It was planned to demonstrate a modified variant of the aircraft. The upgraded plane is fitted with Russian engines and air-to-air missiles. However, “Rosoboronexport” said that the South-African representatives suddenly refused to upgrade their aircraft. So now “Mirage-1” flies over the exhibition with initial fitting.

There is also a stand of a local company that according to its representative Dave Middlemost produces Mi-17 and Mi-24 helicopters together with Mil Company. He stated that his company provides weapons systems and digital navigation systems for these helicopters. The representative of Rosoboronexport told RG that he had never heard of anything like that before.

It seems that AA&D-2008 exhibition still has a lot of surprises for Russian arms developers in store. However there is no telling if they are pleasant or not.