Small quantities of VX, a potent nerve agent, were produced under the auspices of Project Coast. This was done chiefly at Roodeplaat Research Laboratories (RRL), the main BW research, testing, and production facility, but possibly also at Systems Research Development, a separate company established in part to test CBW protective gear by bioengineer Jan Lourens. However, although there are certain indications that the South Africans may have considered employing VX as an offensive weapon on the battlefield, there is no evidence at all that they ever actually did so.

At the trial of Coast Project Officer Wouter Basson, former RRL scientist Dr. Stiaan Wandrag testified that his main work for the South African Defence Force (SADF) involved developing CBW antidotes, ostensibly for the protection of VIPs, security force members, and South African agents who might be exposed to CW and BW agents. In connection with this task, he conducted studies on a variety of dangerous substances, studies that invariably included the carrying out of safety tests on animals. One of those substances was VX. Organic chemist Dr. Klaus Psotta also indicated that he had worked on the synthesis of VX at RRL, although the process was so complicated and difficult that he had only progressed as far as the first two or three steps. This type of risky work was carried out in the Compression Lab at RRL, a basement laboratory used for highly toxic agents that featured extremely tight security and high compression filtration systems installed by Jan Lourens. The individual responsible for overseeing the planning of this Compression Lab was RRL's R&D director, Dr. André Immelman, who later acknowledged that he had planned it with products such as VX, sarin, and tabun in mind. He added that research on the organophosphate paraoxon offered an ideal cover for RRL's research on those three nerve agents, since the same stringent protection and containment standards were required to carry out work on extremely poisonous substances like insecticides. Basson himself later testified that all research on lethal CBW agents intended for conventional weapon delivery, including VX, was concluded by 1986 or 1987, although the so-called VIP protection and "anti-terrorism" programs continued. What is significant about this remark is not so much the proclaimed conclusion of such research, but the admission that research was actually carried out with an eye toward using VX in conventional weapons.

Jan Lourens further revealed that Charles van Remoortere, one of his European partners in the firm Protechnik, met with a potential customer named "Mr. Muambar," who wanted to purchase a binary weapon. (This is undoubtedly a reference to Israeli businessman Nahum Manbar, who in 1993 allegedly signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran to provide both technical know-how and a list of needed equipment so that the Iranians would be able to build a factory for the production of binary shells filled with VX. Although he was convicted in May 1997 by an Israeli court for providing Iran with deadly CW agents, Manbar insisted that his activities were an integral part of a covert British-Israeli intelligence operation designed to penetrate and disrupt the Iranian CW program.) Lourens then designed a shell—apparently a 155mm projectile – to house two chemicals that could then combine to make VX. (This is a rather tricky process insofar as VX is concerned.) The chemicals were actually manufactured at Protechnik, but as far as Lourens knows the developmental prototype was never sold or delivered. Despite this, he decided not to inform his military colleagues about the scheme. Van Remoortere later testified under cross-examination that he was involved with his Protechnik partner Bernard Zimmer and Dr. Philip Coleman in negotiations to sell the system to a supposed "German" (i.e., Manbar), who led them to believe that he was interested in the system solely for storing chemical weapons. They then provided the client with Lourens' drawings of the proposed system. When Manbar returned and indicated that he really intended to use the system as an offensive weapon rather than for storage, Van Remoortere and his colleagues withdrew from the deal.

In 1990 President F. W. De Klerk prohibited the carrying out of any further work on lethal CBW agents, and in 1993 Project Coast was officially terminated. The stocks of standard CW agents produced by South Africa were supposedly destroyed in conformity with international agreements, despite the fact that the actual destruction process was never independently verified. Although several chemical plants there continue to produce highly toxic substances for normal industrial and agricultural use, none of these substances appear to be intended for deployment as lethal anti-personnel agents. The current government still has access to the type of technical expertise and the sort of sophisticated R&D facilities that would enable it to initiate a new CW program, but there is little reason to suppose that it has any interest in doing so.

	Updated February 2006