What are the possible weaknesses of our military?

last SG · 2005-07-06T18:02:07+00:00

I always wonder what is the objective of such exercises? Does it really put the capabilities of the commanders and their men into real test? Everything were...

tvdog SG

Are we mature enough to talk about such a sensitive topic? Or should we just continue to look only on the sunny side?

(By sensitive, I do not mean "classified" stuff.)

The kind of weaknesses I'm talking about is whether do you consider the average rifleman as good as, say, the Malaysians? Are we strong enough in the armour, airforce, navy department? Is the SAF soldier tough enough physically and mentallly for combat? Do you think overconfidence and arrogance is an issue? Are our officers competent combat leaders? etc. Is the overall lack of combat experience dangerous?

It's very prevalent for forumers to attack each other instead of talking about the issue especially when someone brings up something unpopular.

Let's be mature when someone bring up negative issues as the point is to identify these things and hopefully SAF might improve on.

ditzy SG

"Air" heads. Laughing

octega SG

Overly dependant on technology.

I'm just waiting for some country/someone to develop the world first EMP weapon. Then it would be interesting to see how SAF would react to it.

the.raven SG

island too small Laughing

tankee1981 SG

The most obvious possible 'weakness' of SAF is that it is mainly a conscript army and not a professional one. Recently, NS time is reduced to 2 years throughout. Honestly, to train a professional soldier, 2 years is just right. But our soldiers are trained and turn operational in less than 2 years. Please bear in mind that the specialists and officiers whom are supposed to be better trained also have their NS ending in 2 years. This will create problems as the men are in the unit much longer and maybe even more proficient in their vocation as compared to the specs and offiicers. People especially specs and officers who already served NS will be able to understand what i meant.

I am not saying that cutting down NS time is not good,after all we do not have any clear and present big threats right at our doorsteps. We are a small country so i suppose this is a what the government have to do to balance both economical and military strength of Singapore. Very Happy

ditzy SG

What could our little island possibly have that someone else possibly wants and is worth fighting for it? Laughing

baer SG

Mental endurance, this seems to be slacking.

Previous experience (with my NSMen unit) was that - you can throw anything at us (digging up to 27 hrs nonstop, then do beach obstacles, then 400m minefield then go through defence of position etc) this we struggled to finish.

Some of the NCO's (now being recycled) share common opinion that newer NS units (now coming to be operational) seem less able to complete same tasks.

|-|05| SG

EMP is quite over rated. Infact alot of devices have been shielded. Also mechanical technology is unaffected.

khk SG

in terms of the respective vocations, i think nsmen r well trained enuff in their areas of specialisations…the problem is being too specialised… except for certain vocations, most nsmen r not well trained in infantry stuff…bmt touches the basics, but will be forgotten by soldiers not in infantry vocations… FIBUA shld b part of bmt… since our civilian world is a concrete jungle…

octega SG

Shielding does provides some protection, however does not fully protect.
The name Electro-Magnetic already states it is not limited by medium. Because there is no such weapon at the moment (or so it has been stated), there is really no idea how powerful such weapon can be, to be fully shielded from it.

With SAF stepping into the 3G era. Alot of electronics/electircal stuff has been intergrated into force. Therefore, although we must progress in this direction, we must also be prepared to be able to fall back on the so called "manual ways" of soldiering without loosing combat effectiveness even if such a weapon is deployed (if it ever is invented in the first place Mr. Green )

storywolf SG

Where u form man !!! EMP weapon been around for ages ! Don't you know that since EMP weapon appear, military planes, tanks, ships all have emp shealth of some sort, even buildings.

vaxjunior SG

I sort of concur with tankee1981's point about the training and how that gels with the entire mentality of men in the unit and the command and control aspects.

The fact that ncos and officers have to be on course longer necessarily mean that we will be in the operational units for a shorter period that the men. My own experience was that I had men who were just 2-3 wks earlier in the unit and that had a little bit of impact of how we interacted with our guys. On top of that, we were in the comms support and not infantry, so skills and knowledge "talked" more than just "leadership" skills.

One way to counter this might be to have men under the earlier batches of ncos and officers but the issue here is the ORD dates are not the same so when the "older" batch of ncos leave, the men would have to go under "newer" ncos.

There is no simple way to tackle this but I guess the platoon sergeants and regular ncos/officers just have to act as the real bridge and implement the nec discipline to make it all work.

vaxjunior SG

I am not sure, but someone had posted that certain infantry units have been converted to Fibua ops. For my own experience, I did "enjoy" the Fibua training during Safincos/Sispec course. I found that it was more interesting. However, the basic fighting movements like flanking etc are still applicable in the fibua environment.

Apart from this very specific training issue, I think we have a strong foundation on the combine arms idea. The point is how to bring this to bear in the urban/jungle sprawl concept. This is important as we can't think of just one specific context ie jungle OR urban but the terrain around us both in Singapore and other friendly countries are covered by urban, urban sprawl and then jungles. It is therefore important for us to look at integrating combine arms operations that cover the jungle and also the urban components i.e. we can quickly adapt to the different conditions within these "three" environments. Specifically, since i came from comms bkgrd, this is important in comms planning (no real specifics or classified things here) as we have many assumptions of terrain and with the greater use of unmanned vehicles, this becomes even more important as these unmanned vehicles are linked via comms links. You dun even need EMP stuff to knock out comms and links. Terrain is good enough. With more concrete and jungle "interferences", that's it. So more realistic training in this area might be crucial. Somewhere in this thread, we have also talked about the reliance on mobile/cell phones for coordination purposes, this is also a interesting "weakness" and threats as most of the commanders take for granted and ignore the real comms issue. The reality is that in times of war, there is no cell phones network to rely on. (you can't roam everywhere and you can't get data connections). Hence I think this area of work is one that might benefit from more attention and professional training.

My 2 cents. ;-)

Laughing

octega SG

Aiyo, wat I meant is a true-blue-non-nuclear-non-letheal EMP weapon. The one u can drop in Singapore, knock the whole island electronically but no one is dead.

To best of my knowledge, currently, the technology has matured to built one. However, none one has yet build one officially (or unofficially that could be another thing, it is rumor the US has one, please see the link below).
Here are my references:-

For concept
http://science.howstuffworks.com/e-bomb1.htm

For further reading on deployment, defence, avaliabiility
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/kopp/apjemp.html

Extras
http://www.milnet.com/e-bomb.htm

Please do correct me if I am wrong. Very Happy

tvdog SG

Any war we are likely to fight in will involve relatively "low tech" enemies.

What will likely happen is that we will achieve air superiority very early on, which seems to be our doctrine anyway, hence the over empahsis on air force with an estimated 120 combat aircrafts.

In the event of a perceived threat we will likely wipe out enemies' air power early on like Israel in the Six Day War. But this depends on our judgement to take the initiative to strike first.

So what we are left to face will likely be a very conventional i.e. low tech land warfare.

Malaysians are currently concentrating on building airborne RDF battalions so it seems their strategy to counter our "Forward Defense" doctrine is to surprise attack first and land paratroops in our rear while their other forces mass for a frontal attack across the causeways. They will supplement these attacks with other "coastal hooks" which can come from the east, west or the south. Their goal will be to deny us any chance of a effective "Forward Defense" strategy by bringing the fight to our island. We can occupy as much of their forests as we want but they're gonna attack our city. Hence their employment of MLRS.

I think that us being a conscript army is not too big a problem. Another point is that the most effective units are not necessarily the NSF units. The reservist units are more experienced and also more mature and have a lot more to fight for. Israel's army is mostly conscripts also, as were many victorious armies during wars. So this is not a major problem.

For me, I think inexperience, over-reliance on technology and firepower, and under-estimation of our potential enemies' fighting prowess will cause a lot of problems.

We use words like "stupid" to describe our potential enemies. If you don't believe me there is one topic on this forum with a title of "stupid Malaysian Naval project". Many of us seem to think our potential enemies are always fcuking up or sitting around twiddling their thumbs while we talk loudly of "Forward Defense" or what super-duper combat ship or aircraft we will buy...

America was 100 times more advanced and well-armed than their enemies in Korea and Vietnam yet the enemy found ways to negate these advantages.

And our small size means that we can't even afford to lose one battle.

I think SAF has yet to develop an effective counter against the Malaysian's very low-tech MLRS. These will be used more as terror weapons to hit our city than as a military weapon. They can hide easily and fire salvoes at our airbases and- say Ang Mo Kio. We can only detect the launchers after they have fired their ordnance and we have no effective ways of completely destroying these rockets once they're airborne.

Another problem I sense is the lack of real killer aggression in our soldiers. In China where I now live people whom have served in the PLA say that the PLA still believes that you can only get tough and aggressive soldiers by using frequent beatings during training. The stick carried by their equivalent of CSMs and officers is actually used to strike soldiers when they fcuk up.

You may laugh or it sounds babaric but this is the tactic many armies like those of Japan during WW2, Russia, Korea and many specops use to produce killer instincts in soldiers.

During the time I served the instructors still pushed, dragged or kicked recruits in the backside and used very vulgar languages. Apparently now instructors can't use vulgar language and can only make a recruit do a limited number of push ups a day.

And SAF has decided we don't need bayonets anymore as evidenced by the SAR-21.

Wow...

pufferfish_79 SG

I agree with you on the last part. The army is getting softer. towards my ORD some yrs back, i started to notice this. And now with the trolley duffle bag, it looks abit like wat, air steward in green pulling the duffle bag. May in a few yrs.. you will see the maids donning the uniforms and marching in place of the employer’’s pampered son.

tvdog SG

Fcuk, trolley duffel bag... you serious?

84mmrr SG

That's true, my jaw dropped when i saw recruits at Pasir Ris Interchange with the trolley thing....

spacemarine SG

Give them a break. So what if they have it easier than us, as long as their actual training regime is demanding mentally and physically.

Lugging that freaking duffel back is backbreaking and makes me angry only when I know there are better alternatives. Just like when we are transporting stores for exercise, they make us carry them instead of us using a trolley, which is more efficient as it uses less manpower and takes less time.

spacemarine SG

The mental aspect is our Achilles Heel. We just don't know if we have it when crunch time comes, whether we have the primal endurance and rage to overcome all obstacles in our path to beat the enemy. Having a seige mentality could hone this mental endurance a bit, but there are drawbacks.