troung

Singapore has a rather neat and very well equipped military to defend their nation. Young men have to recieve training in the army. So they are one of the handful of SE Asian nations to have a robust reserve force.

They have strong technology in their army and have a strong local defense industry which provides much of the equipment for their army as well as upgrading other equipment.

They have strong ties with the USA and Israel as well as France and the UK. They even have strong ties with Indonesia leaving them really one rival in the area...

Being such a small nation they have a large defense force. Having such a force also provides stablity for investors. Also being so small they don't plan to fight if they have to on their own soil. Granted much of their air force is overseas because there is not room for it (training wise) and their heaviest tanks are in Taiwan.

So if they have to fight in defense of Singapore the war will not be taking place on their soil. Rather neat to study up on...

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Singapore Army

Formed largely out of conscripted soldiers and reserve forces (former conscripts), the Army is capable of mobilising over 350,000 reserves and has an active force of 60,000.

Doctrine and Capabilities According to military and strategic analysts, Singapore is known to be using a forward-defense, or pre-emptive doctrine. Though little is known of its actual modus operandi as Singapore strongly guards its strategic planning.

The Singapore Army focuses on leveraging from technology and weapon systems as "force-multipliers". It boasts of some of the most advanced, and sometimes the only operator of certain military hardware in the South-East Asia region. The Singapore Army is also capable of amphibious and sustained operations with its highly capable logistics force.

Main components of the Army are its 3 Combined-Arms Division.

3rd, 6th and 9th Division

Each comprising:

1x Armoured Brigade (4 Armoured Regiments, 1 Engineers Bn, 1 Sig Coy, 1 Recon Coy)

2x Infantry Brigade (3 Infantry Regiments, 1 Engineers Bn, 1 Sig Coy, 1 Recon Coy)

1x Signals Battalion

1x Artillery Batallion

1x Combat Engineers' Battalion

1x Air Defense Battalion

- Other unknown Divisional assets

Other Divisions/Brigades:

PDF - Infantry Defense Division (Formerly 1PDF and 2PDF now merged)

21Div - Rapid Reployment Division (Consist of at least 3x Air-deployable Guards Brigades)

25Div - Reserve Mechanized Infantry Division led by Chief Armour Officer - BG Bernard Tan

32Div - Unknown Division (Rumoured to be Mechanised/Armour Division)

4SAB - 4th Singapore Armoured Brigade, consisting of at least 1x Tank and 2x AI Battalion

Non-divisional assets:

At least 1x Active Commandos Battalion and 1x Reserve Commando Battalion

Unknown number of secret "Special Operations Forces" trained by US DELTA Force, Navy SEALS, etc.

Naval-Divers (Trained by US Navy SEALs) under the command of the Navy

Main Combat weapons:

- Centurion Main Battle Tanks (~60 - 100)

- AMX-13SM1 Light Tanks (~350)

- AMX-10PAC90 and other variants (~44)

- M113-A2 ULTRA (Upgraded with 25mm Bushmaster or 40/50 OWS) (~700)

- M-728 CET (Combat Engineers' Tractors) (unknown number)

- M-60AVLB, Bionix AVLB, AMX-13SM1 AVLB, Other AVLBs (unknown)

- Bionix 25mm and 40/50 Versions (~300-500)

- BV-206 Armoured Carrier

- Bronco ATTC GPMG-armed Armoured Carrier

- FH-2000 155mm/52-calibre Howitzer (~54)

- FH-88 155mm Towed Howitzer (~54)

- M71-S 155mm Towed Howitzer (~54)

- Primus 155mm/39-calibre Automated SP Howitzer (~54)

- CIS-50 Heavy Machine Gun

- FN GPMG 7.62mm Machine Gun

- Ultimax 5.56mm Machine Gun

- M-16S-1 5.56mm Rifle

- M-203 40mm Grenade Launcher

- SAR-21 5.56mm Rifle

- CIS (Chartered Industries of Singapore) 40mm Automatic GL

- SPIKE ATGM

- ARMBRUST LAW

- MATADOR LAW

- Various Mortars (Up to 120mm Super-Rapid 3rpm Mortar)
- 84mm and 106mm Recoiless Guns (Phasing Out)

- Air Force-operated UH-1H, Super Puma, CH-47SD helicopters to support airborne/special-ops

troung

Singapore And The Revolution In Military Affairs: An Outsider’s Perspective
by Dr Tim Huxley



Singapore’s military capability is, by most measures, the most advanced in Southeast Asia . The build-up of Singapore’s armed forces and its national defence industry, as well as local defence R&D, reflects the determination of the People’s Action Party government to ensure the city-state’s survival in a potentially hostile regional environment. Over the last decade, the key advantages of a highly-developed economy and a relatively highly-educated population, reinforced by increasingly intense interaction with the armed forces and defence industries of advanced industrial countries, have allowed Singapore to begin taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the contemporary Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). The Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) has fielded increasingly sophisticated systems, particularly in the RMA-critical areas of precision weapons, command, control, communications and computer-processing (C4), and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR). Integrated logistic support (ILS) is also well-developed.

At the same time, several factors constrain Singapore’s efforts to exploit the RMA more fully. Crucially, the vital doctrinal and organisation innovation required to maximise the benefits of the RMA is so far rather less well advanced. Secondly, Singapore’s defence planners need to focus on adapting the RMA to the city-state’s strategic circumstances, in terms of the need to respond to an expanding range of potential asymmetric threats as well as increasing military capabilities within the region. Thirdly, the modernisation of Singapore’s military capabilities is taking place in circumstances of budgetary stringency, exacerbated by the financial implications of major procurement programmes aimed at enhancing conventional deterrence and war-fighting capability. However, the notion of military transformation, which is currently taking root in Singapore’s defence establishment, offers a framework for mitigating these factors.

Singapore’s Defence Posture

Geopolitical circumstances have forced Singapore’s government to take defence extremely seriously since the city-state separated from Malaysia in 1965. Though the government sees security holistically and the strategy of Total Defence provides for the wholesale mobilisation of the population and national resources in time of crisis or conflict, the military component of defence has always loomed large. Despite Singapore’s small size and population, by the late 1990s its armed forces were probably the best-equipped, best-trained and potentially most effective in South-east Asia . The government routinely devotes 25 - 30% of its total annual spending (roughly 5% of GDP) to the armed forces. In 2003/4, Singapore’s defence budget amounts to S$8.25b (US$4.7b), by far the largest national defence effort in Southeast Asia.1

In developing the city-state’s armed forces, Singapore’s leaders have increasingly stressed the im-portance of exploiting technology to compensate for the lack of strategic depth and shortage of professional military manpower. The SAF prizes its “technological edge” , which has almost certainly provided it with conventional military advantages over any likely adversaries in its immediate region. In part, this technological edge has derived from purchases of advanced military equipment from overseas suppliers (for example, F-16C/D fighter/strike aircraft from the US during the 1990s) but it is also a product of Singapore’s own highly capable defence industry and substantial defence R&D efforts.

Clearly, Singapore’s defence establishment recognises the RMA’s significance. According to Defending Singapore in the 21st Century (DS21), Ministry of Defence’s (MINDEF) most recent comprehensive defence policy statement (issued in February 2000):

The revolution in military affairs will change the nature of warfare. Superior numbers in platforms…will become less of an advantage unless all these platforms can be integrated into a unified, flexible and effective fighting system using advanced information technologies. At the same time, the ever-increasing reliance on information technology means that protecting one’s own information systems and disrupting the enemy’s will become a major aspect of warfare…2

Placing the SAF’s future development firmly in this new context, DS21 promised that the SAF would “exploit developments in the RMA, such as the integration of information technology into weapon systems” to achieve battlefield superiority.3 As for Singapore’s defence industry,“the digital battlefield of the future and the need for commercial technology in IT and communications will influence the approach we take to ensure that we sustain a technological edge.”4

Organisational and Doctrinal Issues

In purely technological terms, Singapore is evidently acquiring many of the necessary pre-requisites for participation in the RMA. However, MINDEF and the SAF have not so far implemented the doctrinal and organisational innovations that are probably necessary to absorb these technologies into an effective “system of systems” . While there are important indications that the SAF has begun laying the foundations for major doctrinal shifts and organisational restructuring, there is clearly still a long way to go.

Even before discussion of the RMA became voguish, the SAF 2000 planning blueprint adopted in 1988 as the result of a major force structure review brought significant changes to Singapore’s military organisation and doctrine, particularly in the army. Under Army 2000, a single-service derivative of SAF 2000, army doctrine stressed offensive combined arms operations and the conduct of a “24-hour battle” . In organisational terms, the most important change under Army 2000 was the introduction of genuine (as opposed to nominal) combined arms divisions, each including an armoured brigade as well as two infantry brigades, even in peacetime. Another innovation was the establishment of 21st Division, a light rapid deployment formation trained for air-mobile and amphibious operations. In the mid-1990s, the organisational evolution went a step further with the integration of reservist and active units within the three combined arms divisions.5

SAF 2000 also brought much greater emphasis on joint-service cooperation, and from 1994 established the Integrated Warfare concept as the basis for a doctrinal framework which attempted to integrate and exploit synergies in the three services’capabilities through a joint-service command and control system. Because of the SAF’s relative youth as an organisation, small regular cadre and the lack of strong single-service traditions, institutional obstacles to joint operations are rather weaker than is the case in many longer-established national armed forces. As a result of this new emphasis on joint-service operations, in 1989 the air force established a Tactical Support Wing, which became Tactical Air Support Command (TASC) in 1991 with responsibility for planning, co-ordinating and providing air support for the army and navy. One key TASC activity is operating UAVs in support of the army. The increasing emphasis on joint-service cooperation was also clear in the establishment in 1995 of a tri-service officer training academy, the SAFTI Military Institute. In addition, the Tri-Service Staff Course, which is conducted six times a year for a total of up to 240 officers, is aimed specifically at furthering the SAF’s Integrated Warfare capability.6 Joint-service exercises have been held routinely since the 1990s.

MINDEF’s commitment to exploiting new information and communications technologies to give the SAF a “strategic edge” in the area of C4 and ISR was clear even in the late 1980s and early 1990s.7 In 1992, it was reported that the SAF planned operations based on a “radio electronic combat” doctrine that integrated electronic warfare with reconnaissance, physical disruption and deception.8 However, this doctrinal emphasis increased greatly under Army 21, the planning blueprint which has guided the development of the SAF’s land component since April 1999. Army 21 was written in the context of the RMA and emphasises the development of information capabilities, deriving from the “integration of command, control, communications and sensor systems”, sufficient to achieve “dominant battlefield awareness”.9

Senior MINDEF officials (from ministerial-level downwards) and many SAF officers speak the language of the RMA with a high degree of fluency, and evidently recognise the military component of a broader problem with which Singapore’s leaders have been grappling since the 1990s: how to encourage Singaporeans to be more creative in order to retain and enhance the city-state’s competitive advantages. A key problem in relation to the RMA is that Singapore’s military command and control have in the past tended to be rigid and strictly hierarchical, with effective authority concentrated at the higher levels of MINDEF and the SAF. A reluctance to delegate authority to middle-level and junior commanders has been characteristic. For example, air force squadron commanders have reputedly hitherto been able to exercise little operational initiative compared with their Australian or British counterparts. The SAF’s lack of organisational flexibility has been reinforced by not only the political and administrative system, which has tended not to reward individualism or creativity, but also by the local cultural milieu in which respect for elders and seniors, and considerations of “face” , have traditionally been central features.

As in other areas of competition, it is evident that, in the field of defence, technological superiority alone is not sufficient for Singapore to come out on top. New information and com-munications technology has evidently stimulated much thinking within the SAF about the need for new command and control doctrines and new forms of military organisation. In 1999, the Singapore air force’s Chief of Staff, Brigadier-General Rocky Lim, pointed out that, by providing rapid access to more information, the latest IT applications increase the pressure for decision-making at lower levels in the chain of command. According to Lim, this “could change your entire doctrine of air warfare”.10 The influence of intensified interaction with Western armed forces, which already practise more decentralised command and control, may also push MINDEF and the SAF to delegate operational authority to lower levels of command more effectively. This applies most obviously in case of the air force’s long-term training programmes in the US , Australia and France , but elements of all three services train with Western forces that are themselves going through fundamental doctrinal and organisational change.

However, glimpses of internal debates within the armed forces, revealed in sources such as POINTER, suggest some impatience amongst younger middle-ranking officers for doctrinal and organisational change which would lend greater substance to Singapore’s incipient RMA. As early as 1992, one young army officer (the commander of a Guards battalion) argued that the SAF could gain an edge over opponents by adopting the German military philosophy of Auftragstaktik, involving considerable decentralisation of command and control, and greater expectations of initiative on the part of lower-level commanders and even individual soldiers:

Our Asian heritage has unfortunately...put too much premium on the value of “face” . We are exceedingly hierarchy-conscious to the extent that constructive criticism is extremely rare from bottom-up. It will take much time and deliberate effort to dispel the fear of ... subordinates to speak up if they think their superiors are in the wrong, and for the latter to accept constructive criticism.11

Writing almost a decade later, a more senior SAF staff officer returned to this theme, pointing to both the German army’s Auftragstaktik and the Israeli army’s similarly decentralised command system, both based heavily on the initiative of commanders and soldiers, as examples to be followed in implementing Army 21.12

More recently, several POINTER articles have argued for major organisational change within the SAF in response to technological developments. The essence of these arguments is that the SAF should adopt what one officer termed a “flatter and more network-based system”.13 More specifically, another officer has indicated that Army 21 may just “put new wine into old bottles” , and argues in favour of “streamlined and flattened military organisations” which will “allow the SAF to compress the time needed for battle-procedure and decision-making” while at the same time reducing the vulnerability of the army to a pre-emptive enemy attack. Following the examples of the US Army’s Force XXI and the French brigade-based army, he proposes that the Singapore army’s basic combined arms units should be organised around brigades rather than divisions.14

Singapore’s Strategic Future: How Relevant is the RMA?

Another key challenge for MINDEF and the SAF is to develop new doctrines and organisational forms that enable exploitation of advanced technologies in ways that are relevant to the city-state’s evolving strategic predicament. Singapore’s regional security environment has deteriorated significantly since the economic recession of 1997 - 98 and there are few signs that the city-state’s strategic circumstances will improve significantly in the foreseeable future.

In these uncertain circumstances, Singapore’s leaders - while never pointing at any specific threats - have repeatedly emphasised the continuing importance of the republic’s military instrument for deterring conventional threats from other states. The ability of Singapore’s defence establishment to continue developing and integrating operational concepts for the advanced information and communications technologies extensively employed for command and control, satellite and other surveillance systems (including airborne early warning, maritime patrol and tactical reconnaissance aircraft, UAVs, and ground-based radars), and precision-guided weapons – in other words, RMA-type capabilities - will be key to the SAF’s continuing regional military superiority. The aim will be to allow the SAF (particularly the air force, navy and artillery) to locate, target and destroy targets more effectively in the context of round-the-clock combined arms and joint-service operations. At the same time, greater emphasis on criteria of range and endurance in selecting major platforms (principally ships, submarines and aircraft) will provide Singapore with an artificial form of strategic depth by allowing the SAF to fight at greater distance from home.

However, like their counterparts in other states attempting to engage in the RMA, Singapore’s security planners have needed to take into account possible asymmetric challenges to their probable conventional military superiority. Since the 1990s, social and political developments in Indonesia , in particular, have posed a new type of security concern for Singapore . Continuing social, economic and political instability, together with intensifying secessionist and inter-communal conflict around Indonesia’s periphery, have raised the possibility of a “complex emergency” on Singapore’s doorstep involving a breakdown in law and order, warlordism, communal conflict, piracy, hostage-taking, unregulated population movements, famine, rampant disease and environmental catastrophe. It is conceivable that the SAF could be drawn into diffuse, long-term low-intensity operations.

Other new challenges - from either governments or non-governmental groups - might include various combinations of bombings, the use of weapons of mass destruction (particularly chemical or biological agents) or information attacks, aimed at Singapore’s civilian population and national infrastructure as well as military targets. Contamination of Singapore’s water supply, for example, could be a particular effective asymmetric weapon. Though countering such asymmetric threats would largely be the responsibility of “Home Team” non-military agencies under the Ministry of Home Affairs (principally the police and civil defence force), the SAF has a range of capabilities relevant to such contingencies (for example, the army’s Special Operations Force in the anti-terrorist role). According to Deputy Prime Minister and then-Minister for Defence Tony Tan, during 2000 - 2001 MINDEF and the SAF, working with the “Home Team” , “made good progress” in developing “concepts, frameworks and operational plans” in relation to potential low-intensity conflict.15

The September 11 attacks in the US and the Singapore authorities’arrest in December 2001 of 15 members of Jemaah Islamiah (JI), the Southeast Asian terrorist organisation allied with Al-Qaeda, in connection with a plot to attack local targets accentuated concerns over potential asymmetric threats. The main impact on Singapore’s security and defence planning was to reinforce the validity of the long-established idea of Total Defence, which involves non-military agencies as well as MINDEF and the SAF in ensuring Singapore’s security.16 In November 2001, the government announced that it would implement a “homeland security” strategy involving closer cooperation between MINDEF and the home affairs ministry, and the SAF and police.17 The JI attacks on Bali in October 2002 and on the Marriott hotel in Jakarta in August 2003 further exacerbated Singapore’s acute concerns over the threat from terrorism.

Particularly in light of recent regional developments, it is clear that Singapore’s developing RMA-type capabilities do not provide a panacea for its widening security requirements. However, they are not necessarily irrelevant to emerging low-intensity security challenges. For example, the greatly-improved ISR capabilities likely to be generated by Singapore’s investment in UAVs and satellites will be highly germane to the monitoring of population and shipping movements in the Malacca and Singapore Straits . Moreover, technological improvements in the capability of ordinary infantry soldiers, ranging from the SAR-21 rifle to the Advanced Combat Man System, have a wider utility than simply on a high-intensity battlefield against a conventional enemy. Information security systems may be as useful in protecting critical national infrastructure such as public utilities and air traffic control against “cyber-terrorism” as they are in defending military C4I systems against attacks by opposing armed forces.

Budgetary Constraints

A third major factor complicating the SAF’s ability to benefit from the RMA is that Singapore’s resources for military procurement and R&D are slim, particularly when compared with those available to the major Western military powers. To put Singapore’s military budget in perspective: in approximate terms it amounts to less than 2% of the United States’or 12% of Japan’s military spending. The RMA offers huge improvements in capability, but at great cost: even the United States’close military allies in Europe , such as the United Kingdom (which spends more than seven times as much as Singapore on defence) themselves face con-siderable difficulties in keeping up with US technological advances and ensuring inter-operability. With the deceleration of Singapore’s economic growth and the emergence of new demands imposed by counter-terrorism measures on the overall security budget, there is little prospect that defence budget can expand significantly in real terms as long as the govern-
ment maintains military spending within the long-established self-imposed cap of 6% of GDP. Already, it appears that the current budget crunch has not only restricted spending on overseas exercises and other training activities, but has also forced the deferment of some major procurement projects. Senior defence officials have highlighted the potential impact on the SAF in the longer-term of the escalating cost of replacing existing equipment.18 For MINDEF and the SAF, developing RMA-type capabilities in the prevailing tough budgetary environment is
clearly a major challenge.

Transformation

At the beginning of the present decade, Singapore’s defence establishment began considering broader issues related to the SAF’s modernisation, and participation in the RMA has sub-sequently been presented as one component of a thoroughgoing process of military transformation. Key senior MINDEF officials and SAF officers see such transformation as imperative if the SAF is to develop its operational flexibility in an “uncertain and complex security landscape” , make the most of a limited defence budget in the context of escalating equipment costs, compensate for a demographic shift that will reduce personnel strength, and exploit the RMA as fully as possible - thereby maintaining its capacity to deter and defend against both conventional and unconventional threats.19

Writing in a recent issue of POINTER, Andrew Tan, formerly Director (Policy) in MINDEF, assessed the implications of transformation for the SAF. While Tan’s comments were general rather than specific, they do provide some insight into the way that the SAF may develop in the future. Importantly, he argues that change in the SAF will involve “a series of adaptations to an evolving security environment” – in other words, more of an evolutionary than a revolutionary transformation. While maintaining its capacity to deter conventional attacks, the SAF will
need to “move away from core competencies based on any form of numerical advantage” towards developing a “portfolio of capabilities” in which it maintains a “qualitative edge” that will provide Singapore’s political leadership with a range of options in coping with an increasingly diverse threat spectrum.20

A significant indication of the potential for radical change in Singapore’s military thinking and organisation came in early 2003 when MINDEF and the SAF established the Future Systems Directorate (FSD). FSD, which is commanded by a one-star officer known as the “Future Systems Architect” and has been allocated responsibility for managing 1% of the defence budget (ap-proximately S$83m in 2003 - 2004), is charged with challenging established military thinking to enable the SAF to cope effectively with the rapidly changing and unpredictable strategic environment. The Directorate is complemented by the SAF’s Centre for Military Experimentation (SCME), which will use sophisticated simulations in its “battle labs” to “develop and evaluate new war-fighting concepts by creating an environment for exploration, experimentation and demonstration”.21 CME’s emphasis, at least initially, is on exploiting C4I systems more extensively as force multipliers.

Two monographs published during 2003 under the auspices of POINTER underline the extent of officially-encouraged new thinking within MINDEF and the SAF and indicate ways in which Singapore’s defence sector could change as a consequence of the transformation initiative now under way. Building on recent debates in POINTER over how the SAF might become a more effective “learning organisation”,22 the first monograph - Creating the Capacity to Change: Defence Entrepreneurship for the 21st Century - argues for a major cultural change that will create “C2C [capacity to change] space” alongside existing organisational structures in the sector. The intention would be to encourage “defence entrepreneurship” in order to facilitate “constant change and innovation” in strategy, capability and warfighting. In the area of strategy, suggested “first steps” include building links with experts in critical national infrastructure, creating a new MINDEF/SAF forum and introducing relatively short-lived project offices to produce scoping studies of potential military innovations, and measures to nurture alternative viewpoints within the system. In the capability sphere, the monograph argues for “a capability innovation eco-system” which generates multiple, competing ideas. At the warfighting level, suggestions include setting aside “existing norms and practices” to establish new commands and formations, using modular forces which can quickly be reconfigured for new tasks, and developing wider intelligence networks.23 The second monograph presents the case for the Integrated Knowledge-based Command and Control (IKC2) doctrine – intended to allow the streamlining and sharing of C2 resources throughout the SAF - as a central element of trans-formation efforts.24

In the medium-term future (perhaps by the year 2010), this radical thinking about the SAF’s structure, equipment, and training, combined with the force multiplication effect of new C4I systems, implies that the SAF may evolve substantially. There will, of course, be considerable continuity in some areas of defence policy: for example, conscripts and reservists will continue to provide the great bulk of the SAF’s manpower. However, large formations (most obviously the army’s divisions, or at least some of them) may well disappear, while smaller formations could be better-equipped and more powerful. There are likely to be more specialist formations such as the Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Explosives Defence Group, established several years ago. At the same time, there is likely to be even closer cooperation between MINDEF and the SAF on the one hand, and non-military security agencies on the other.

Major items of older equipment are unlikely to be replaced one-for-one, as much more capable weapons systems extensively networked with ISR assets, are procured (or in some cases developed locally). For example, a single squadron of highly-capable fourth-generation Next Fighter Replacement (NFR) combat aircraft, due for selection in early 2005, might be judged sufficient to replace three squadrons of F-5Ss and A-4SUs. At the same time, new systems not previously fielded by the SAF may substantially increase its firepower: cruise missiles could provide a lethal and accurate but cost-effective option for long-range strike.25 Remotely-controlled systems, such as naval UAVs or the LALEE airborne platform being considered as a successor for the RSAF’s E-2Cs, may also play considerably more important roles in the future SAF. Overseas training will remain important, but may involve new locations that allow for exercises against less familiar adversary forces.

Conclusion

For little more than S$8b annually, MINDEF and the SAF provide Singapore with a remarkable range of military capabilities. In Singapore’s immediate regional context, these capabilities presently outclass those of any potential opponent in conventional military terms. Singapore possesses highly educated and IT-literate military, research and industrial personnel, and its defence-industrial and R&D establishment has set up an extensive network of international links. For these reasons, it can almost certainly sustain its conventional military advantage for the rest of this decade. Not-withstanding bilateral and multi-lateral confidence-building efforts, however, in the longer-term Singapore is likely to face growing challenges from the modernised and expanded military capabilities of other regional states. In these circumstances, the city-state will need to develop smarter, more hard-hitting military capabilities to stay ahead of the game and maintain the SAF’s deterrent and defensive capacity.

So far, the need for greater doctrinal and organisational innovation, the requirement to develop and adapt new technologies and military thinking in response to emerging uncon-ventional challenges (such as terrorism and complex emergencies) as well as conventional threats, and budgetary constraints have prevented Singapore from leveraging the information-led RMA to maximum benefit. However, these factors have encouraged MINDEF and the SAF to mobilise the defence community’s collective imagination to consider how to transform Singapore’s military doctrine, organisation and capabilities in a more profound manner than simply by importing elements of RMA technology and thinking from overseas. Effectively, transformation will provide a context for adapting the RMA to Singapore’s particular national requirements. Though the impact of this transformation is likely to prove evolutionary rather than revolutionary, its impact in the medium- to long-term will probably be far-reaching, ensuring that the republic’s military capability is as well-adapted to new challenges as the budgetary and demographic constraints allow.

Endnotes

1 “Budget 2001”, The Straits Times, 23 Feb 2001.

2 Defending Singapore in the 21st Century (Singapore: Ministry of Defence, 2000), p10.

3 Ibid., p75.

4 Ibid., p69.

5 For details see Tim Huxley, Defending the Lion City: The Armed Forces of Singapore (St Leonards, NSW, Australia: Allen & Unwin, 2000), pp123-6.

6 “Officers from the army, navy and air force to train together”, The Straits Times, 7 Oct 1998.

7 “Information Technology: Giving the SAF a Strategic Edge”, Pioneer (Mar 1990), pp14-17.

8 Prasun K. Sengupta, “Singapore and the Army 2000 plan”, Military Technology, 7/1992, p73.

9 “Building the 21st Century Warrior - Army 21”, Pioneer (May 1999), p13; Defending Singapore in the 21 st Century, p30.

10 “Millennium force”, Flight International ( 16 Jun 1999), p67.

11 MAJ Peter Gwee Chon Lin, “Auftragstaktik. A Philosophy for Management, Training and War”, POINTER Vol.18 No.4 (Oct-Dec 1992), p34.

12 LTC Tan Kim Seng, “Initiative as the Fighting Power in the Army 21 ’s vision” [sic], POINTER Vol.27 No.3 (Jul-Sep 2001).

13 MAJ Seet Pi Shen, ‘The Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA): Challenge to Existing Military Paradigms and its impact on the Singapore Armed Forces’, POINTER Vol.27 No.2 (Apr-Jun 2001), p16.

14 CPT Fong Kum Kuen, “A Quantum Leap towards Knowledge Warfare: Revolution in Military Organizations in the SAF’, POINTER Vol.27 No.2 (Apr-Jun 2001), pp80, 92, 94.

15 Statement by Dr Tony Tan at the Committee of Supply debate, 8 March 2001, Singapore Government Press Release, 8 March 2001.

16 “Sept 11 proves need for Total Defence, says DPM Tan”, The Straits Times, 27 Oct 2001.

17 Lydia Lim, “S’pore to have ‘homeland security’”, The Straits Times, 5 Nov 2001.

18 Chief Defence Scientist, Professor Lui Pao Chuen, “Weapons of the Future: Let’s think out of the box”, The Straits Times, 12 Jul 2003.

19 BG Jimmy Khoo, “Eight Big Reasons why Transformation is not for the SAF”, POINTER Vol.29 No.3 (Jul-Sep 2003), pp6-15.

20 Andrew Tan, “Military Transformation in a Changing Security Landscape: Implications for the SAF”, POINTER Vol.29 No.3 (Jul-Sep 2003), pp30-33.

21 David Boey, “Battle lab to help reshape SAF war muscles”, The Straits Times ( 12 Jul 2003).

22 LTA Benjamin Cher Tau Wei, “A Learning Army – Translating Theory into Practice”, POINTER, Vol.29 No.1 (Jan-Mar 2003).

23 Choy Dawen et al, Creating the Capacity to Change: Defence Entrepreneurship for the 21st Century. POINTER Monograph No. 1 (Singapore: POINTER: Journal of the Singapore Armed Forces, 2003), pp39-50.

24 Jacqueline Lee et al, Realising Integrated Knowledge-based Command and Control. Transforming the SAF, POINTER Monograph No. 2 (Singapore: POINTER: Journal of the Singapore Armed Forces, 2003), p9.

25 See “Weapons of the Future: Let ’s think out of the box”, The Straits Times ( 12 Jul 2003).

sniperdude411

Second article's a little long.

Very interesting country; it seems vastly different than any other country's army.
Very good choice of weapons, too. How does the SAR-21 stack-up against other guns?

giggs88

They should take over some nearby islands for more space.

Or just buy them, if their economy is so good.

troung

Depends on who you ask. Most soldiers love it compared to the M-16S1 in terms of ease of use, ease of cleaning and goodies. Some people don't like that fact it is a bullpup. And recon troopers don't want to give up their CAR-15s. Still the SAR-21 has been very successful in tests with units and is easier to train with then the M-16S1 according to users.

But overall it is a very workable system and the only real complaint one ever gets is the fact it is a bullpup.

It is all about water...

hammer

IIRC their plan was to take the war to the Malaysian jungles in case of a war with them.

__________________
Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie!'...till you can find a rock. ;)

troung

You recall correctly...

Yeah if things get thick over water and such or if out of the blue Malaysia looked ready to do something aggresive the war would be fought on Malaysian soil.

sniperdude411

I don't really know how it would be possible to take a known war into Singaporian soil... no land.

troung

It's an island not a reef or a hole in the damn water...

Wraith601

Since the entire country is basically one big city, one designed with defense in mind any invasion would be extremely hard to pull off. On the the other hand Singapore's force structure is pretty heavy and the urban enviroment would hamper their tank and AFV forces a good bit. It'd be a infantry dominated war of attrition, not pretty.

__________________
"We always have been, we are, and I hope that we always shall be, detested in France."
-Sir Arthur Wellesley

sniperdude411

You're right. It wouldn't be pretty.

troung

Singapore lacks the space to trade for time.

They will not allow a war with Malaysia to be fought in Singapore. If a war is to happen it will be fought in Malaysia. Singapore actually has a far larger armored force and a bigger and far more combat capable air force. So really the plan to is kill the RMAF and cross into Malaysia and fight the war there to basically cripple the RMA push as far as possible to do so and then pull back as Singapore lacks the population to want to hold Malaysia.

hammer

I agree. they 've got a First class airforce.

Wraith601

I was thinking more along the lines of the PRC or Indonesia for some reason starting a war. Nobody except the US can project enough power to take the city and even then it'd be so bloody I doubt the public would stand for it. All hypothectical of course.

troung

The PRC lacks the means. The RSAF would probably catch them on thew way if the PacFleet did not happen to steam by the invasion force.

Indonesia lacks the means as well. Check out the thread on total peoples defense, it shows Indonesian doctrine and military thinking. Plus them and Singapore are actually rather friendly. They do joint exerises, Singapore sells them equipment and very likely is one of the nations helping them sanction jump on their American military equipment. So Indonesia is not the threat they see for a bunch of reasons.

Now Malaysia is actually the military threat as they see it.