Li, mercs are NEVER a good idea to base your army
on. Ask Malacca.
And they will never be loyal to Singapore, Singapore is their
employee, not their home, they finish their tour and go back to
their family, bye bye. It’s like expecting construction workers to
develop loyalty to Singapore just because they worked 5 years here.
Possible to happen, but seriously unlikely.
And not to mention supply of your “special forces” then ends up
depending on other countries. Right now, if we had went “Gurkhas =
SOF”, Nepal is planning to cut supply of soldiers to
other countries to improve its’ image, we would have been stripped
of our whole SOF force in one PR decision.
And “fitness” is built up. The reason Singaporeans are less fit
is not because we’re “weaker”, I know some of our guys who train
with SEAL and GSG9 and they pulled
through, it’s because we spend a lot of our time on our ass in
class, in front of the TV and computer instead of running around.
Go to any gym and look for the long term exercisers and see if they
are “less fit”.
Mercenaries, especially Gurkhas, still have very relevant niche
roles to play. Gurkhas have fought very successfully alongside
British and Indian forces in modern times. We can definitely use
them in their traditional role of elite light infantry, one
battalion alongside our many.
It just does not gel with the Government's gospel that defence
falls on Singaporeans' shoulders alone. If we successfully
implement a Gurkha unit, the people will question NS even
further.
Secondly, if you look at how they are treated viz their
children's education and residency rights, let's just say they
don't fit into the Government's population plans for Singapore. For
their university-age children, agreeing not to take PR is a
condition for having their university education paid for.