it certainly existed... released November 2007.
I very much doubt that PHP is the source of your problems although I would note that we are now up to 5.2.11 and/or 5.3.2!!
I've never even heard of SANDF (South African National Defence Force according to Wikipedia - maybe not ) so I doubt I can much more help. The usual rants and raves apply though. Make sure you are allocating enough memory. If you are going into swap you are dead in the water.
EDIT:
SNADF perhaps?
Hardware and performance
PHP 5.2.5 performance
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