SINGAPORE – The Ministry of Defence’s (Mindef) announcement last week that it would buy two more submarines, new infantry fighting vehicles and other hardware in the coming years would, on the face of it, look like the same annual ritual: Every year, a few platforms are refreshed.

Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen’s speech during the debate on his ministry’s budget on March 3, however, made it clear that it is not more of the same.

Instead, the ministry is taking a decisive step towards achieving its vision of transforming the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) into a next-generation defence force by 2040.

Dr Ng provided strong signals that the SAF has been taking keen lessons from conflicts and developments around the world in deciding what to procure, to prepare not only for a more turbulent world, but also one whose trajectory is less knowable.

“How do we prepare Singapore and our people for a disruptive future, even a disrupted one?” he asked. “For leaders everywhere, that surely must be the overriding concern as the global order changes before our very eyes.”

The answer is to look at recent and ongoing conflicts such as the Ukraine war and Red Sea shipping crisis for an insight into what modern warfare looks like, he noted. Such engagements have put into stark relief the critical role of drones and unmanned systems, for instance, as well as the complexity of modern urban warfare.

Meeting the unmanned challenge

For a second consecutive year, Dr Ng highlighted the stark asymmetry in costs between an aggressor who launches a swarm of low-cost drones, and the defender who has to spend over 15 times the cost of those drones to nullify the attack.

Such was the case when conventional missiles were used in the Red Sea to deal with the drones fired by Houthi rebels, he noted.

According to media reports, the US Navy fired more air defence missiles in the 15 months until January than it had in the last 30 years, since it began combat operations in the Red Sea.

This is a depletion of some US$1 billion (S$1.33 billion) worth of armaments, a stockpile which will take years to rebuild.

To meet the threat of drone swarms, the SAF will build up Counter-Unmanned Aerial System (C-UAS) capabilities, which include a suite of sensors, jammers and weapon solutions.

Dr Ng did not go into detail, but this suite will likely have high-resolution cameras to detect smaller drones, and, possibly, cannon systems that can shoot them down cheaply or sever the link ...