Quora Answer: Why Do Singaporeans Think the SAF is Incompetent in Warfare?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Why do so many Singaporeans think that the SAF is incompetent in warfare?”

Ignorance.  However, that is not necessarily a bad thing.  We have to understand that superficial familiarity breeds contempt. Because the average Singaporean male has to serve national service, via conscription, he imagines that he has some insight into how the SAF works because he extrapolates from his experience.  That is an incomplete picture of what the SAF truly is, and its real capabilities.

My family is military through and through.  I have five younger siblings also in uniform.  My godmother was the aide of a previous Chief of Army.  I have uncles who served in the Commandos, Guards, MID, and elsewhere.  My close business associates served in intelligence, in units of the SAF, recently acknowledged.  I have a friend who was one of the people who stormed SQ117.  That is a parallel, different SAF.

The greatest myth that Singaporeans believe is that the SAF has no combat experience.  We have units and personnel with plenty of combat experience, from being deployed in UN missions, humanitarian missions, to direct strike actions with total deniability.  Our special forces and intelligence are rightly respected and feared.  Ours is not to be flashy.  Our people go to exotic places, get things done, and leave.  In decades past, SAF personnel have been deployed to Mindanao, to Iraq, to Afghanistan, to Somalia, to East Timor, to Sri Lanka, and many more places.

The second myth is that our conscript army would crumble in an all-out war.  This is the trope people mention when there is the usual fantasy question about Malaysia cutting off our water.  If there is one thing we have instilled in our people is this will to never give an inch.  This, we adopted from the Israelis.  If we ever have to go to war, we will play to win.  There will be no half punches, no holding back.  Our doctrine is to strike first, to go all out for absolute victory, and ask for forgiveness later for any collateral damage.  It is always better to deal with their dead than ours.  When the officer corps and the flag units lead, the rest will follow.

We even have special units to take control of the population of an area that has been seized, from psychological warfare, to language and culture experts, to civil disobedience control units.  We have been fighting this war in our heads ever since we gained independence.  That is the extent of our preparedness.

The third myth is that the SAF is full of paper generals.  People who are not in the military do not understand the roles of the various levels of command.  The SAF is ably led, and the officer and NCO corps is full of experienced people.  MINDEF prides itself of finding the right people to do the right things.  Like any large organisation, there are missteps, of course.

MINDEF is an organisation that is hungry for knowledge and expertise.  How they have acquired it over the last several decades has not always been the most ethical.  I remember the time when we acquired a certain type of vehicle from an unnamed country, ostensibly for evaluation.  We took it apart to learn how it worked, so that we could build our own, and could not put it back together properly.  That created a diplomatic incident, and we had to acquire a system from this particular country at considerable cost to appease them, the only non-NATO compliant system.  This was about 25 years ago.

In terms of matériel, doctrine and combat effectiveness, the SAF is lethal.  It is decades ahead of any country in Southeast Asia, and we can comfortably hold off any two of them if the need arose, until reinforcements arrive from external allies.  In a time when our neighbours are spending on replacement and modernisation, we are spending on doctrine implementation, and combat evolution.