Singapore and the Revolution in Military Affairs

Abstract

Singapore’s military capability is, by most measures, the most advanced in Southeast Asia. The buildup of Singapore’s armed forces and its national defense industry, as well as local defense research and development (R&D), reflects the determination of the People’s Action Party (PAP) government to ensure the city-state’s survival in a potentially hostile regional environment. However, these developments would not have been possible if Singapore had not possessed such a highly developed economy and well-educated population. These advantages, reinforced by increasingly intense interaction with the armed forces and defense industries of advanced industrial countries, have allowed Singapore to make substantial strides toward participation in the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) since the 1990s. Singapore has fielded increasingly sophisticated defense systems, particularly in the RMA-critical areas of precision weapons, command, control, communications, and computer-processing (C4), and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR). Integrated logistic support (ILS) is also well developed. Though the doctrinal and organizational innovation required to implement the RMA is so far rather less well advanced, Singapore seems to have made substantial progress toward establishing a relatively low cost “system of systems,” which will far outclass the military capabilities of other Southeast Asian states for at least the next decade. And although Singapore’s government has become increasingly concerned over asymmetric threats, it is clearly determined to maintain its emphasis on developing high-technology conventional military capabilities.KeywordsMilitary CapabilityInformation WarfareStrait TimeElectronic WarfareSoutheast Asian StateThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.