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| Country Of Origin: | South Africa |
| Designation: | Infantry Fighting Vehicle |
| Configuration: | 6 x 6 |
| Manufacturer: | Reumech Sandock |
| Length: | 7,21 M |
| Width: | 2,7m |
| Height: | 2,395m |
| Weight: | 18,5 T |
| Ground Clearance: | 350mm |
| Trench: | 1,15m |
| Speed: | 105 km/h (road)
30km/h (off-road) |
| Range: | 1000 km |
| Primary armament: | 20mm semi-automatic cannon |
| Secondary armament: | 1 x 7.62 mm MG (coaxial), 7.62 mm MG (anti-aircraft), 1 x 7.62 mm MG (anti-aircraft), 2 x 2 smoke grenade dischargers
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| Power plant: | D 3256 BTXF 6-cylinder in-line turbocharged diesel developing 282 hp at 2,200 rpm
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| Crew: | 4 + 7 |
The
Ratel, is the basic
Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV) of the
South African National Defence Force 's
Mechanized Infantry Battalion s, and is named after an unbelievably tough little African animal known in English as the
Honey Badger . The 6x6 Ratel was indigenously developed and produced for the
South African Army in order to circumvent the arms embargo of
South Africa . Design work began in
1968 , with prototypes completed in
1974 . The basic Ratel-20 version entered operational service in
1977 , with other variants, including the improved Mark II and Mark III versions of the basic Ratel, being phased in over the subsequent decade. Mark I verhicles were upgraded to Mark II and III standard during refits. The Ratel was the first wheeled IFV to enter military service, and is generally regarded as an influential design; a number of other countries have since produced vehicles similar to the Ratel, including the
Belgium SIBMAS --which is all but a direct copy-- and a number of South American designs. The Ratel-20 is the primary squad IFV, with the Ratel-60, Ratel-90, and Ratel-ZT3 (the
Anti-tank Guided Missile version) used primarily in anti-armor, support, and recon elements within a battalion. The vehicle usually carries a crew of four or five men, with a seven-man infantry squad.
The vehicle was designed with the South African environment and the combat exerience of the
South African Defence Force (SADF) foremost in mind. For example, it has considerably more firepower than most comparable infantry fighting vehicles--ranging from machine guns up to 90-mm cannon-- but it is wheeled, with six run-flat tires for the long-distance speed, mobility, and ease of maintenance that tracked vehicles lack. Unlike the
United States Army 's
M2 /
M3 Bradley to the
Warsaw Pact 's
BMP designs, for example, the Ratel does not need to be transported long distance on trains or trailer trucks; it can simply drive to the destination. The Ratel's ground clearance and cross-country performance are very good--certainly adequate for the generally rolling and arid terrain it usually operates in, and with a ride which SADF crews often compared favorably to civilian cars-- and also served as the basis for the
G6 Self-propelled Gun . SADF crews also frequently praised the visibility imparted by the vehicle's high profile; though it made the Ratel a bigger target, it enabled the crews to see the surrounding area more easily. The Ratel's design also gives far more consideration to protection against
Land Mine s than most armored vehicles, reflecting SADF experience and priorities. Like the
Casspir and
Buffel vehicles, the bottom of the hull is angled and reinforced so as to deflect mine blasts out to the sides. The Ratel's wheels, if damaged, are also much easier to repair or replace than tracks. The vehicle also has multiple doors and hatches; the two main doors are located in the vehicle's sides, but a small rear door and roof hatches allow the crew to exit the vehicle from many directions at once, or to more easily dismount under cover during an ambush.
The basic Ratel's primary armament consists of a 20mm automatic cannon mounted in a powered turret at the front of the vehicle, supplemented by a coaxial .30-caliber machine gun and a 0.50-caliber pintle-mounted machine gun mounted by the commander's roof hatch. The Ratel also has four rifle ports on each side of the vehicle, allowing the infantrymen to fire from within the vehicle. An additional pintle-mounted machine gun, accessed from a roof hatch, is located at the rear of the Ratel's upper deck and provides cover for the Ratel's rear quarter. The crew consists of commander, driver, gunner, and radio operator, as well as seven infantrymen. The Ratel-60 and Ratel-90 variants are otherwise identical, save that the former mounts a 60mm breech-loading mortar in turrets taken from the
Eland 60 armoured cars, and the Ratel-90 mounts a 90mm low-velocity gun and has a five-man crew, adding a loader for the turret gun. The 60mm mortar is most effectively used in firing smoke shells, and is generally useless against armoured vehicles or dug-in troops.
The Ratel is relatively lightly armored, in order to preserve mobility, weapons space, and range; the vehicle is well-protected against bullets and artillery shell splinters, but is vulnerable to tank guns, automatic cannon such as the Warsaw Pact 23mm AA guns guns (which were often used in a ground-fire role in
Namibia and
Angola ) or guided missiles. The SADF's experience in the wars in Namibia and Angola showed that Ratels were far more likely to be faced with small-arms fire and mines in small-unit actions or ambushes than to run into main battle tanks in pitched battles. More to the point, the Ratel is a personnel carrier and not a tank, and is by definition not intended to fight tanks head-to-head.
The Ratel-90 fire-support variant is an unusual vehicle in that it can carry an infantry squad as well as its' 90mm turret gun--though there is a space trade-off between 90mm ammunition and troops, and the Ratel-90 does not normally carry a full squad-- but one which amply proved its worth with its ability to deliver immediate artillery fire in support of the dismounted infantry squad. It is not a tank destroyer, but has occasionally been used as one albeit with some difficulty. The low-velocity 90mm gun, a license-made copy of the 1950s-vintage French
GIAT F1, is very accurate out to 2km range, but is generally considered to be inadequate for facing modern MBTs on a toe-to-toe basis, but it is quite capable against personnel carriers or other lighter AFVs, unarmored vehicles, exposed infantry, and buildings or entrenchments. Firing the 90mm gun from a moving Ratel is difficult because the fire-control system is decidedly primitive, and because the vehicle's transmission needs to be disengaged before firing to avoid the shock of recoil's wrecking the transmission.
Even on the rare occasions when SADF Ratels encountered enemy armor, such as the Soviet-made tanks encountered in
Operation Protea (
1981 ) and Operations
Modular ,
Hooper , and
Packer in
1988 , however, they succeeded, albeit with difficulty, thanks to superior training and handling. The
61 Mechanised Infantry Battalion Group found that each enemy
T-55 and
T-62 required multiple shots from the 90mm guns to disable it, and that the SADF vehicles had to attack in groups, fire from point-blank range, and hit the tanks in the engine vents, turret rim, or similar weak points in order to have an effect, the 90mm shells being otherwise ineffective against the Soviet tanks' armor. For this reason, the SADF's
Olifants (modified
Centurion ) tanks were considerably more effective against enemy armor than Ratels, Elands, or other vehicles.
The antitank guided missile variant, the Ratel ZT-3, is equipped with the indigenously-developed ZT-3 heavy antitank missile, known variously as the Makopa (Swift) and Ingwe (Leopard). The Ratel ZT3 is basically a Ratel-20 with a different turret, which is fitted with a three-round missile launcher. Other missiles are carried within the hull. This laser-guided ATGM is roughly comparable to the
European HOT or
American TOW missiles in performance; in fact, there have been allegations of it being based on a TOW prototype design which the
Central Intelligence Agency provided to South Africa during the 1980s. It entered service in the late 1980s, in time for Operation Modular, and did yeoman service against enemy armor at Cuato Canevale. The SADF was previously limited to the obsolete
French -designed
ENTAC Wire-guided ATGM , which was usually transported in
Land Rover s or other unarmoured vehicles.
A typical SADF mechanized company consists of 16 Ratels, with three four-vehicle rifle platoons and a two-vehicle command section. A battalion's support company consists of 3 Ratel 90; 3
MILAN team in APC or Ratel-ZT3, 6 Ratel 81mm Mortar vehicles, and 3 Ystervark self-propelled 20mm AA vehicles. Since SADF units frequently operated in ad-hoc task forces during the Bushwar, however, units structures and equipment frequently varied widely. At the time of Operation Modular in 1988, for example, the 61st Mechanized's task force consisted of two infantry companies with Ratel 20s, an armored car squadron with 14 Ratel 90s, a mortar platoon with 12 81mm Ratels, an antitank company with a mix of ATGW and Ratel-90 vehicles as well as other attachments.
The South African Army had been using the 6x6 British
Alvis Saracen APC for several years before the acquisition of spare parts become problematic due to the arms embargo, the South Africans decided to manufacture a new vehicle to satisfy their needs. After building the
Eland , a modified version of the 4x4
Panhard AML armoured car, Sandock then undertook to design a replacement for the Saracen. The prototype was completed in 1976, and the first units rolled out the following year. Since then, over a thousand Ratel vehicles were manufactured.
- Ratel 20 - Original version, French designed turret (see side notes)
- Ratel 60 - crew of 4 plus 7 infantry, turret is identical to that of the Eland 60 with a 60 mm breech-loading mortar
- Ratel 81 - no turret, but an 81mm mortar is installed in the crew compartment for use as a fire support platform
- Ratel 90 - crew of 5 plus 7 infantry, turret is identical to that of the Eland 90 . Primary role: fire support for the Mechanized Battalions.
- Ratel Command - crew of 9 men, two-seater turret with a 12,7 mm MG
- Ratel Maintenance - setup as a mobile workshop
- Ratel ZT3 - new anti-tank turret, with a rack containing 3 AT missiles ready for launch and additional missiles stored within the hull.
- Ratel Logistic - 8x8 logistic vehicle. Only 2 were ever built and thus never went into production.
- Angola 1978
- Western Sahara
