More bang for the military buck
In the final quarter of last year, savings from suggestions helped to save $62.7 million. This means that for every $1 awarded to servicemen for their suggestions, $144 was saved.
What they don't tell you: Dubious calculations and criteria for cost savings are used, and because servicemen are forced to come up with "cost saving" plans (and have a quota, to boot), ideas of questionable veracity are accepted. Administrative instructions for all activities are supposed to be printed, and for routine activities, each set of admin instructions is 98% identical to that of the previous time's.
Items such as fighter aircraft and missile gunboats are upgraded regularly and replaced only when they are no longer cost-effective to deploy, which means they can have a longer lifespan.
What they don't tell you: We use what is essentially 40 year old technology in many areas. Look how long it took for them to retire the "Super" Skyhawk. And the SM-1 looks positively pathetic alongside a real battle tank.
Outsourcing
Tests to identify those with flying potential are now done in Australia. With a commercial arrangement in place, there is no need to own and maintain a fleet of trainer aircraft for the tests. This saves $7 million a year.
Maintenance of the C-130 aircraft deployed to help in operations in Iraq was farmed out to ST Aerospace.
What they don't tell you: We could probably outsource half of the SAF's combat operations and it'd be cheaper and more effective.
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
It's the people who count in national defence
He focused on three areas: improving training safety standards, better compensation for full-time national servicemen and retirement schemes. At the heart of these measures is the belief that the armed forces must take care of its people.
3 words: "Respect. Care. Dignity". Or rather, the absence of them. Nuff said.
In other words, the SAF must do more with the limited manpower it has. The good news is it already has a headstart - with 'well-educated soldiers who can easily master the technologically sophisticated weapons and equipment'. The armed forces must therefore make every soldier count. Ultimately, however, the sum of a nation's defence is not merely the strength of its military. So women, who are not conscripted, should not feel left out.
Riiiight. On the one hand, the SAF has "limited" (ie not enough) manpower and so must "make every soldier count". On the other, we have effective soldiers, and manpower is not everything. How disingeneous. They're trying to have it both ways.
Although Minister of State (Defence) Cedric Foo rejected a call led by several women MPs to also make national service compulsory for women, he was careful not to play down their role. Indeed, women here already contribute to nation-building and total defence through the workforce. As he put it, they are also 'critical pillars in support of civil, psychological and social defence'.
So men do not "contribute to nation-building and total defence through the workforce"? I believe the workforce participation rate for males is higher than females, and since they earn more, they presumably earn more. Thus, they contribute more to nation-building and total defence through the workforce than women. Is he also suggesting that men do not have important contributions in the realms of civil, psychological and social defence, or that women are useless with regards to military defence? What a sexist view (both ways)!
The experience of the British and Americans during World War II illustrates this principle well. While the men were at the front line, the women were in the factories manning machines and churning out ammunition and even aircraft for troops who were somewhere 'over there'. Even though they had different roles to play, women were no less important than men in the war effort.
So men are only good for the front line and women are only good for manning machines and producing goods. How edifying.
When it comes to national defence, including guarding against the terrorist threat, it is not the sophistication of the technology that counts but how everyone chips in.
Unfortunately, females who think they can chip in more effectively through military defence are denied that chance (signing on does not count) and males who feel they are more effective buttressing other pillars of total defence than military and try to act upon that are thrown into DB.
NS for women? Yet another nay
On the point that women could be trained in nursing during NS to cope better in crises, at home or even in hospital, he said that a proper nursing course would take at least three years. This is longer than the two-and-a-half-year NS period.
Odd, the Combat Medic course takes but 3 months and trains potential medics in more than civilian nursing skills.
As for the argument that conscripting women could solve the Singapore Armed Forces' manpower shortage, he said the shortage was a problem that could be managed by making greater use of technology and outsourcing.
Conveniently, technology and outsourcing are sufficient to ensure we don't enslave women as well, but not powerful enough to stop us from enslaving every person born with male genitalia.
On NS enabling greater social cohesion among men and women, he said its primary purpose is the defence of Singapore.
I hope this means they'll use the "social cohesion" argument for slavery less often in the future. At the very least, enslaving women as well would increase the fertility rate.
'We have to examine whether the objectives of social cohesion and nation-building can best be met by means other than compulsory NS for women,' he said, adding that it would remove them from the workforce at significant cost to Singapore and to themselves.
How about, "'We have to examine whether the objective of national defence (and oft-mentioned sub-objectives of social cohesion, nation-building and social engineering) can best be met by means other than compulsory NS for all men without an option for alternative service, especially for conscientious objectors,' he said, adding that it would remove them from the workforce and the real world and cause them misery, at significant cost to Singapore and to themselves."