According to an article published by online business and investment news platform Daily Investor journalist, Bianke Neethling, on November 13, 2026, state-owned defence procurement and acquisition agency, Armscor – or Armaments Corporation of South Africa – is selling off obsolete and out-of-service military assets and defence matériel, including retired aircraft, armoured police vehicles and old ammunition.
The sale of these old, obsolete and out-of-service assets is on behalf of the Department of Defence (DoD) through a structured disposal programme, for the purpose of establishing an alternative revenue stream to address the challenge of declining defence budget allocations.
The development of a revenue stream in the form of selling outdated assets, is a statutory empowerment and mandate that must be adhered to by Armscor, owing to having to abide by the Armscor Act of 2003.
Additionally, Armscor and DoD further cemented the operational requirements for matériel life-cycle management and disposal by signing a rolling three-year agreement in June, 2025 – as well as Armscor’s establishment of an Investment and Deal-Making Committee in April of the same year.
The Investment and Deal-Making Committee is responsible for advising the Armscor board on policies, business strategies and business case studies in relation to reviewing capital assets disposal requests and the overall “sweating of” assets.
Armscor realised, in 2025, that many accumulated assets were obsolete and outdated, and the board decided to develop an asset disposal programme to address the asset redundancy problem.
The disposal programme enabled the sale of a few assets in the 2025/2026 fiscal year, and Armscor reported a gain of R10.27 million for the year through March 2026 – proving success in the disposal of assets and liabilities through the programme.
The organisation has also offered several armoured vehicles for use by the South African Police Services.
Armscor was established in 1968, and was used as a war machine during the times of arms embargoes faced by the Apartheid regime in South Africa. The organisation employed about 30 000 people during its rise to becoming an industrial giant between 1968 and 1992 – when it became responsible for buying and manufacturing world-class hardware suited for South Africa’s geographical terrain.
Some of the defence hardware that Armscor was responsible for manufacturing and buying include the Rooivalk helicopter prototype, Ratel infantry combat vehicle, Casspir mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle, as well as G5 and G6 long-range howitzer artillery systems.
