For sale: 79 Saudi jets. As good as new; only one previous owner. But this being Saudi Arabia, it wasn’t an old-lady driver.

The advert at the bottom of Page 33 of last week’s Mail & Guardian sat rather incongruously next to its immediate neighbours, which called for administrative staff at Save the Children, a technical adviser on retrofitting street lights to be energy-efficient, and an education lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand.

“Auction notice,” it read in bold type; then: “The Royal Saudi Air Force is putting on auction 79 of its F-5 fighter jet fleet. Interested parties are invited to submit their bidding price(s) …”

This week the Saudi Air Force and the Pretoria mission of the kingdom confirmed that the offer is genuine, the auction legitimate and that anybody can make a bid for one or several supersonic and missile-capable warplanes.

That the advertisement was published in South Africa was not in any way an indication that a potential market is seen here, staff at the Saudi embassy told the M&G. Similar adverts were published, without fanfare and largely unnoticed, in the quiet weeks of late December and early January, pretty much in every country where the kingdom has military attachés.

Still, South Africa has its fair share of military buffs, quirky billionaires and determined collectors, and it is just possible that an advert buried in the back of a newspaper could see a fighter jet delivered to a local port at some future date.

The tricky bit will be getting the deal done.

“Any company that wants to buy these aircraft, they have to have an export licence from the United States government,” said Bader Abdulrahman, a representative of the Royal Saudi Air Force headquarters in Riyadh.

Old design

The F-5 design is more than a half-century old; the first F-5 took to the skies in July 1963. Even then, those who were serious about making war did not take the craft too seriously. Aircraft historians say the US always envisaged the F-5 as an export plane, something relatively cheap that could be sold to poor allies or donated gratis without breaking the bank.

As occasionally happens with supposedly pedestrian military hardware, however, it turned out to be a keeper. Today Northrop Grumman Corporation, which still provides parts and updates, describes it as “one of the most enduring military aircraft designs ever introduced”.

In Botswana the F-5 is still considered front-line equipment; in Iran it was reverse-engineered to create a home-grown plane that neighbour states are cautious about. Saudi Arabia had one shot down during attacks against Iraqi invaders in Kuwait. In the end, the F-5 paid its dues.

And, in some respects, age is an enduring virtue.

“With something like the F-5 it is simple to work out whether it is airworthy, and to keep it running,” said London-based defence analyst Francis Tusa. “Something that relies on basic control wires [that] connect to a stick; you can move the stick and see if the flaps go. Do they move? Very good. You can do a simple X-ray to check for cracks. It’s much easier to do that than with modern carbon-fibre fly-by-wire aircraft.”

That makes the F-5, if not cutting-edge, at least a viable military choice for anyone not planning on going up against next-generation stealth fighters.

Swift commute

And the same aircraft that can take you from Cape Town to Johannesburg in 50 minutes can also make a considerable mess if, say, flown into a building at 1 700km/h, even sans weapons or electronic warfare modules.

Hence the enduring export restrictions on machines that are old enough, were they buildings in South Africa, to require clearance from heritage organisations to demolish or modify.

That makes countries such as South Sudan or Singapore, both of which have previously expressed interest in F-5s, more likely buyers – but does not entirely exclude the enterprising billionaire. As long as that billionaire has the patience of a stone.

“On a case-by-case basis, if you are an Oppenheimer rather than Mr Dodgy, you can get these things demilitarised,” said Tusa. “You just need to know it is not just a case of phoning Uncle Sam and asking what you need to take out.”

There is not much by way of a secondary market for F-5s, so estimates of a potential winning bid start from $1?million for the more clapped-out, hard-flown, voetstoots examples. Just remember to factor in transport to the US and then to South Africa, with duties and fees on each leg, and a squad of lawyers and logistics specialists, plus an engineering team to baby-sit your craft en route.

Also, the pros say, make sure to buy no fewer than five: two to merge into once decent plane and three more for spare parts.