We have seen a number of established organs of government fail dramatically in the last 2 years and. I wonder if the SAF which takes up the largest chunk of the budget year in and year out is actually functional.
That's begs the question is the SAF all that it made up to be. Like the SPF will it fail in its basic role. Will our jets fly, will our leaders and their families be around, will our commanders wait, will the communications fail, can the tanks be brought back in time, etc
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The emphatic answer to your question is NO, the SAF will suffer an epic failure worse than the SPF's Little India incident. THe bottom line reason why is that the SAF leadership is not made up of professional soldiers, but of political appointees waiting in the wings for their eventual posts in some GLC or a Ministry. You need professional career soldiers, especially in an army with such a large budget as that of SIngapore. You used to be able to find professional soldiers starting from the Lt. Colonel/Col. rank in the SAF, but even at that, they are rapidly being replaced by SAF scholars. Now, I think professional soldiers will be found at the Major rank and below. Of course, for the rank of General and above, its practically all scholars now.
This can be all blamed on Lee Con You and not Gay Loong as some posters allude to here. This goes back to the days when Wooden was installed as caretaker PM. The senior cadre in the PAP was very reluctant to see Gay Loong succeed as PM right away, and were in favour of
Wooden. Since Wooden had the popular support of the cadre, Con You had to devise a way where Gay Loong could get the support that he needed. SO, hence the long term plan was to take scholars on the side of Gay Loong, give them a SAF scholarship, send them to some good schools on scholarships and run them thru the SAF as fast as possible. Hence, when they become Generals and enter politics, there is an illusory sense of legitimacy to their ministerial positions. In reality, these people have no intention of making the army their career and therefore have no combat or operational experience.
The first generation of SAF leadership and people like Winston Choo were really professional soldiers. Although Winston was a PAP stooge, it still remains that he had no ambitions to run a GLC or a Ministry. You will notice the original philosophy of the SAF weapons procurement versus the philosophy today. The original SAF leadership would order equipment that were value for money and good enough to do the job that needed to be done. They would order the AMX-13 light tanks because they know the infantry needed mobile fire support and some form of tank versus tank capability. And also because the roads and bridges back than did not support 60 ton tanks like the Leo 2. These tanks were bought in carcass form, and SAE did the refurbishment to bring them up to snuff. Same goes for the Douglas A-4 Skyhawks, C-130, etc. New stuff that we bought we relatively cheap F-5Es, and added to by used purchases later. AFter these scholar Generals started taking, over value for money was replaced by "lets get the shiniest newest toy we can buy regardless of the cost". Imagine our F-16s and F-15s are even more capable than the USAF's! Everything we buy today is almost new, and very expensive.
Using the Skyhawk as an example, its principal role in the SAF was as a CAS (Close Air Support) aircraft. This is still a vital role that is still needed today. Its so vital that the US still retains the A-10 Thunderbolt 2 in the role long after its supposed retirement date. The US MArines use their AV-8 Harrier 2 for the same purpose. Well, we don't have this Skyhawk anymore. The Skyhawks cost less than USD$2 million back than, and we will have to now use a USD$30 million F-16 Block 52 on close air support.
But the main point I have to make here is no matter how new your weapons are, or how many of them you have, it will not win you the war if you have poor leadership or generalship. There are many precedents in history when a great leader can lead an army inferior in size and weapons to victory against a vastly superior force. Alexander the Great at Gaugamela is a good example. A good General is a student of war, and a dedicated strategist. He has studied all the famous battles, gone to all the command colleges and studies the enemy assidously. Our scholar generals have not done so. Look at all the Universities that our scholar generals went to. Cambridge, Harvard, etc. Did any of them go to Sandhurst? West Point? Should not a future General, regardless of the country he is from, be attending these military schools? That tells you right there that their minds are not in the game. They are just using the SAF to mark time till their appointments to a Ministry.
Given this, how can you have confidence in the SAF? In the event of a war, will all the scholar generals step aside and hand their commands over to professional soldiers 2 ranks below them? Not likely. Our neighbours have long ago realized that we are a paper tiger, and now one of them, Indonesia, openly mocks us. Why did this happen and what was Con You thinking when he started this whole SAF Scholarship Generals for the PAP scheme? The only reason he did this is that he came to the same conclusion that I did many years ago. That there is no viable military threat to SIngapore from any of its neighbours. Period. Not for now, and not for the foreaseable future. Singapore can be effectively defended by what ever regulars are in the SAF right now and by its standing Police Force, assuming they have professional and capable leadership. (As you can see, the SPF is affected by the scholars contagion too). This is the only reason why he would take such a huge risk to deprive the SAF of effective combat leadership by implementing what is in effect a scheme to produce sham generals. He realized that the chances of SIngapore being invaded or subjected to military attacks by a neighbour are almost nil.
By the way, I have been procrastinating on starting a thread about the who really is a military threat to SIngapore (answer is Nobody), there is a lot of research and most dullards here, (even the anti PAP ones) are not prepared for it.
