"Little red dot" Singapore now an international military player
"Little red dot" Singapore now an international military player
Roberto Coloma Agence France-Presse/Singapore
From tsunami-hit Aceh to hurricane-battered New Orleans, Singapore's role in international relief efforts has thrown the spotlight on the city-state's rise as a Southeast Asian military power.
Thanks to billions of dollars in defense spending powered by explosive economic growth, the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) has left its neighbors behind in terms of sheer firepower, although it has yet to be tested in combat.
"The SAF lacks operational experience no doubt, but in terms of its training, its military hardware, and its doctrines, it is certainly the most developed and mature conventional military force in Southeast Asia," said Assistant Professor Bernard Loo, a military analyst in Singapore.
Singapore's new arms orders will further reinforce its position.
The ministry of defense has announced that it is negotiating with Boeing to buy a squadron of F-15 Eagle fighters, just two months after taking delivery of the first of six "stealth" frigates from French contractor DCN.
The fighter and frigate deals are estimated to be worth US$1 billion each. The F-15 will replace an older generation of fighters and join F-16s already in Singapore's arsenal.
Singapore has been spending around 6 percent of gross domestic product -- its total economic output -- annually on defense, a legacy of its vulnerable early days as a republic.
In the fiscal year to March 2006, its defense budget is 9.26 billion Singapore dollars (US$5.5 billion), up 7.4 percent from a year ago and accounting for almost a third of the national budget.
The island once contemptuously dismissed by former Indonesian president B.J. Habibie as a "little red dot" on the map came to its giant neighbor's aid last December when a tsunami struck Aceh province, leaving some 131,000 people dead.
The SAF's C130 transport aircraft, heavy naval vessels and Super Puma and Chinook helicopters threw a lifeline to Aceh's survivors in the crucial days before a massive global relief effort could be launched.
The role was repeated on a smaller scale when Singapore's Texas-based Chinook helicopters helped in the post-hurricane relief efforts in New Orleans.
While untested in combat, analysts say the SAF has become a formidable force thanks to compulsory military service, in addition to the hardware.
Robert Karniol, Asia-Pacific editor of the military affairs journal Jane's Defense Weekly, said only Vietnam among the Southeast Asian nations could possibly be a military match for Singapore.
"In terms of a standing army and combat capability, the Vietnamese armed forces have an awful lot of combat experience which the Singaporeans don't," he said. "The Singaporeans have proven to be capable when called upon, but they've never been able to do anything as complex as the Vietnamese have."
Before building up its firepower to current levels, Singapore used to follow a "poisoned shrimp" doctrine, he said.
"We're small but if you try to eat us, you will get very sick," Karniol said, summing up the philosophy.
"But it's not a relevant policy anymore because the SAF have become increasingly more powerful and their primary function as with any military force is to deter attack and if attacked to defeat an attack."
The SAF was a puny force in the early years after Singapore was ejected from the Malaysian federation in 1965 and its survival as a republic was in doubt.
When other countries refused to help, Israel sent military advisers but they were officially disguised as Mexicans to avoid offending Singapore's Muslim neighbors.
"They looked swarthy enough," independence leader Lee Kuan Yew wrote in his memoirs.