Will someone please identify the UFO

| Wednesday February 29, 2012 00:00

The Civil Aviation Authority of Botswana (CAAB), the Botswana Defence Force (BDF) and the Directorate of Intelligence (DIS) appear to be making no headway getting their heads around what has apparently struck them like an Unidentified Flying Object. In this day and age, it is a puzzle why the three organisations cannot figure out what happened when we thought it was safe to assume that our radar systems were sufficiently sophisticated to pick up any unauthorised objects in our airspace. We say so because radar systems are designed with speeds that aircraft are capable of in mind.

So far, CAAB says their records - radars, presumably - picked up nothing and we assume that the same is true of the BDF and DIS. Was the system faulty? Or did someone tamper with it in order for the plane to fly in and out, as has been claimed? Or maybe the system has blind spots? These questions are relevant because if an unauthorised flying machine can enter Botswana airspace without detection by none of the authorities minded for the purpose, we lie naked to the machinations of whomsoever may be inclined to do us ill in the whole wide world.

Needless to say, we cannot afford such laxity in today's world that is full of terrorists looking everywhere for targets. And when a breach has occurred, we cannot afford to behave like clowns of such note that we do not know what happened even weeks later; for nothing invites extremists like a security system that is fundamentally insecure!

For a country like Botswana where critics have been questioning the huge budgetary allocations made in the name of state security, it is a serious indictment that our aviation system is so vulnerable to breaches and is unable to determine what happened even several weeks later. The BDF has been replaced by DIS as the most preferred consumer of colossal quantities of taxpayers' money, yet both organisations did not even see a blip anywhere when an unauthorised foreign object traversed our skies. In such a state of affairs, enemy aircraft can fly in, hit targets anywhere, photograph their handiwork and fly out without interruption from any of our so-called rapid response forces.

This is the reality after the setting up of DIS was justified by citing potential security threats from beyond our borders. But we should know better than to be so vulnerable because our recent history is one of bombing raids from the air by forces of apartheid South Africa. Our recent past is also one in which President Ketumile Masire had a close brush with death over Luanda when OK1 was hit because the Angolans allegedly accused Botswana of allowing apartheid South Africa to use its airspace to ferry soldiers and weapons to UNITA forces at a time when the Cold War turned extremely hot in southern Africa. 

                                    Today's thought

          'There are no records in our systems that show any untoward aircraft.'

       - Civil Aviation Authority of Botswana public affairs manager, Modipe Nkwe