2011 Defence Budget is to buy votes!
Citizen NSmen to get $9k award
By Gwendolyn Ng
SINGAPORE citizens who have served their national service will each receive $9,000 through a new award to be given by the Ministry of Defence (Mindef).
The National Service Recognition Award (NSRA) will help to fund the cost of operationally ready national servicemen's (NSmen's) education and also help them buy a home. Commanders will receive a larger sum.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who announced the implementation of the award at the National Day Rally yesterday, said: "It is a significant tangible recognition of the sacrifices, efforts and contributions of our national servicemen. It's for Singapore citizens only."
This will be a token of appreciation for the time and effort citizens give to serve national service, he added.
Mr Lee said: "National service makes a heavy demand on male residents and, I should say, on their spouses and families, too."
He elaborated that male Singapore residents not only have to serve two years of full-time national service and many more years as an NSman, but also try to build their careers and raise their families.
The sum will be paid in tranches at significant milestones of an NSman's service.
It will be deposited into their Post-Secondary Education Accounts and Central Provident Fund accounts.
Mindef will announce details of the award soon.
The award is one of the measures Mr Lee highlighted in a bid to assure Singaporeans that citizens come first.
He added that permanent residents who have completed their national service will receive the award when they take up citizenship.
He was addressing the issue of competition from foreign talent, where he pointed out that it was "not practical to make foreign workers and adult immigrants do national service".
However, Mr Lee pointed out that many PRs and first-generation citizens also do their part by serving national service.
Other ways in which the Government recognises the contributions and sacrifices of NSmen is through providing them with Safra clubhouses, allowances, tax reliefs and top-ups in government bonuses.
The award is good news to 20-year-old NSman Benjamin Huang, who said: "It's good to know that the Government is appreciative of our efforts.
"This will definitely help me pay my school fees when I go to university next year."
"However, Mr Lee pointed out that many PRs and first-generation citizens also do their part by serving national service."
so he has forgotten that the older generation did served the NS too
Originally posted by Ice kosong:
u r a dumb soldier thinkin tat havin better weapon can sure win a war
Sorry, I dun play politics and we all know the SDP strategy and your SDP rhetoric. And I'm not surprised you missed all the points stated.
Read the earlier posts. Psychological defence is not about having better weapons. Efficient tax expenditure on defence is not about just having better weapons either.
The will to fight is important. But if you had to defend your family with your bare hands or with a gun, which would you pick?
Be smart pls. Stop undermining Singapore's defence esp with clueless rhetoric. I feel pai-seh for you.
Originally posted by slim10:orry, I dun play politics and we all know the SDP strategy and your SDP rhetoric. And I'm not surprised you missed all the points stated.
Read the earlier posts. Psychological defence is not about having better weapons. Efficient tax expenditure on defence is not about just having better weapons either.
The will to fight is important. But if you had to defend your family with your bare hands or with a gun, which would you pick?
Be smart pls. Stop undermining Singapore's defence esp with clueless rhetoric. I feel pai-seh for you.
When people say our weapons acquisitions are such good value, and the cost is never revealed, how should we believe in it? That is not spreading a true belief in defence, that is spreading faith. Blind unquestioning faith.
Weasel is right when he said "Total defence is about psychological defence as well. Anything that saps the will of Singaporeans to defend the country should be resisted."
In this case, you are promoting something that is not there except psychologically. Mindef said soldiers today want to understand why. And how well their lives are spent in war. Singapore is run like a company but funny leh, this company does not report to shareholders. By promoting blind faith, you are unwittingly undermining defence.
Just like when PM Lee said "not practical to make foreign workers and adult immigrants do national service". What is the meaning of "not practical"? There are so many service units like Ammo Command which are shorthanded, should they not serve there? If it is not explained to you, you should question.
Originally posted by weasel1962:Its a big risk to spend just for the sake of spending. UK has the 3rd largest defence budget in the world and in a few years will have a navy and air force smaller than Turkey with less stealth a/c. Spent $8+ BILLION on a MRA-4 aircraft and finally had zero-aircraft which ended up scrapped.
If Singapore spent $8 BILLION on nothing, it will have no deterrence.
Friend, not all their fault la. If the world was at peace, we would have MRA-4 sub hunters, Commanche stealth copters, Crusader artillery, 300 F-22s instead of 187...
There has been a war for 10 years. They spent the money on Apache, Blackhawk, infantry and other weapons useful for the current war. Anyone would do the same.
Our government should come up with more budget to build churches.
We should christianise Singapore !!!
Originally posted by Pure Emptiness:Our government should come up with more budget to build churches.
We should christianise Singapore !!!
I think you should scrutinize your own budget more closely.
I dnt like them to use $9k to buy our hearts for serving ns.
Are we that cheap?
Originally posted by Pure Emptiness:Our government should come up with more budget to build churches.
We should christianise Singapore !!!
Go ahead and let us know the outcome.
Most of us have never experienced fear on a National scale like when the Japanese were coming closer and closer from the Malay peninsular towards Singapore in 1942 or when the Indonesians made good their threats to both Malaysia and Singapore by sending commandos and other dire situations in the recent past which the general public may not know about.
When you are aware of the seriousness of some of these "situations" especially the ones in the recent past, then if you as a true Singaporean will be very thankful that we have a very well equipped SAF and also 200,000 NSmen to fall back on in case things really go out of hand .
So I vote for a good defence budget and also support NS althought I had to sacrifice 2 1/2 years of my life for Singapore - so the 2 years NS of today looks good to me. But I will not be surprised if one day NS is only 18 to 20 months. But I will never support the abolishment of NS for Singapore.
But we must always question how many is spent to ensure that budgets are not abused or spent wastefully.
Originally posted by Sepecat:Most of us have never experienced fear on a National scale like when the Japanese were coming closer and closer from the Malay peninsular towards Singapore in 1942 or when the Indonesians made good their threats to both Malaysia and Singapore by sending commandos and other dire situations in the recent past which the general public may not know about.
When you are aware of the seriousness of some of these "situations" especially the ones in the recent past, then if you as a true Singaporean will be very thankful that we have a very well equipped SAF and also 200,000 NSmen to fall back on in case things really go out of hand .
So I vote for a good defence budget and also support NS althought I had to sacrifice 2 1/2 years of my life for Singapore - so the 2 years NS of today looks good to me. But I will not be surprised if one day NS is only 18 to 20 months. But I will never support the abolishment of NS for Singapore.
But we must always question how many is spent to ensure that budgets are not abused or spent wastefully.
Yes, every countries must have its own defence forces.
Whether the defence forces are good or no good.
No abolish of ns will occured in spore.
But at least reduce the ns serving further down to 12 to 15 mths.
Afterall, what we need is capable, educated ns man to man the advance techonological weapons.
To Alize,
Please note that in fact companies do NOT tell their shareholders everything. In fact shareholders are not told many things. There is a lot of discretion when deciding on what and what not to reveal. Many times the shareholders will be the last to know.
For Defence Ministries & militaries everywhere, it is the same that they are all not 100 % transparent. Even the US President does not know what exactly is being funded or what monies goes for what in the so called black projects. Yes, it is of course open to abuse, but there is no perfect situation.
It is indeed not practical for foreigners to perform even the so called mundane tasks in the armed forces. For example I believe that many equipment like the air force fighters in Kuwait were maintained by foreign contract staff back in 1991 and earlier when the Iraqis invaded. The foreigners were the first ones to abandon their posts to leave the country when the bombs dropped and the bullets flew. Even had the Kuwaiti airforce be able to fight , there wud be no one to maintain the fighters to sustain a fight. If I were a foreigner working on contract maintaining a weapons system for my host country. I will do the same. It is not my fight anyway. My life is more precious than my job.
To likeyou,
Personally I think that 18 months is the absolute minimum for NS. There is actually a lot to learn and do to be fully trained & be competent. If too short , no point then in serving NS when you cannot get an effective or competent NSmen who is expected to immediately perform in time of need and crisis. The warning time to mobilize and be ready for action is usually short in times of crisis.
Originally posted by Sepecat:To Alize,
Please note that in fact companies do NOT tell their shareholders everything. In fact shareholders are not told many things. There is a lot of discretion when deciding on what and what not to reveal. Many times the shareholders will be the last to know.
For Defence Ministries & militaries everywhere, it is the same that they are all not 100 % transparent. Even the US President does not know what exactly is being funded or what monies goes for what in the so called black projects. Yes, it is of course open to abuse, but there is no perfect situation.
It is indeed not practical for foreigners to perform even the so called mundane tasks in the armed forces. For example I believe that many equipment like the air force fighters in Kuwait were maintained by foreign contract staff back in 1991 and earlier when the Iraqis invaded. The foreigners were the first ones to abandon their posts to leave the country when the bombs dropped and the bullets flew. Even had the Kuwaiti airforce be able to fight , there wud be no one to maintain the fighters to sustain a fight. If I were a foreigner working on contract maintaining a weapons system for my host country. I will do the same. It is not my fight anyway. My life is more precious than my job.
You are absolutely right about Kuwait's reliance on foreign talent to maintain weapons. To many rich Arabs, maintaining equipment is beneath them and the contractors do it. Recently Oman spent $700 million on 20 HIMARS, we are spending $330 million for 38 because they bought a maintenance package. The unit cost of a HIMARS truck is $3 million. So you never know whether even our package is a good or bad deal.
No company will tell shareholders everything. Even MPs don't know everything, and I'm sure we are smarter than alot of MPs. In this case we know through outside data. We don't know the price of most other programs. Certainly there are good and bad ones we don't know about. Proposing a strong defence and money spent efficiently are two different things. If you are hiding the latter to give the image of the former, then you are sweeping under the carpet. You are left with a psychological defence only that many people will question.
I know I will never succeed in changing anyone's minds, let alone the situation. I only want to get people to think logically.
zhou enlai did said to the us in korean war - "u can have have all the better weapons but u under estimated the motivation of our soldiers"
using scare tatics with better waepons n no motivated soldiers to fight a war, its just pathathic.
The defence budget is to support those garmen companies.
Originally posted by alize:
You are absolutely right about Kuwait's reliance on foreign talent to maintain weapons. To many rich Arabs, maintaining equipment is beneath them and the contractors do it. Recently Oman spent $700 million on 20 HIMARS, we are spending $330 million for 38 because they bought a maintenance package. The unit cost of a HIMARS truck is $3 million. So you never know whether even our package is a good or bad deal.
No company will tell shareholders everything. Even MPs don't know everything, and I'm sure we are smarter than alot of MPs. In this case we know through outside data. We don't know the price of most other programs. Certainly there are good and bad ones we don't know about. Proposing a strong defence and money spent efficiently are two different things. If you are hiding the latter to give the image of the former, then you are sweeping under the carpet. You are left with a psychological defence only that many people will question.
I know I will never succeed in changing anyone's minds, let alone the situation. I only want to get people to think logically.
Middle East end users do not actually maintain the systems themselves. These are farm out to companies, very much like ST. The big difference there is that the size and type of commissions to be paid.
Originally posted by alize:
You are absolutely right about Kuwait's reliance on foreign talent to maintain weapons. To many rich Arabs, maintaining equipment is beneath them and the contractors do it. Recently Oman spent $700 million on 20 HIMARS, we are spending $330 million for 38 because they bought a maintenance package. The unit cost of a HIMARS truck is $3 million. So you never know whether even our package is a good or bad deal.
No company will tell shareholders everything. Even MPs don't know everything, and I'm sure we are smarter than alot of MPs. In this case we know through outside data. We don't know the price of most other programs. Certainly there are good and bad ones we don't know about. Proposing a strong defence and money spent efficiently are two different things. If you are hiding the latter to give the image of the former, then you are sweeping under the carpet. You are left with a psychological defence only that many people will question.
I know I will never succeed in changing anyone's minds, let alone the situation. I only want to get people to think logically.
SG only bought 18 for US$330m.
Jordan bought 12 for US$220m (with roughly the proportional number of munitions) so there's a benchmark there. The other entity that bought it was UAE (not oman) who bought 20 for US$752m. It included 202 ATACM pods. Those are very long range (288km) rockets which can hit KL from Singapore.
I think the himars doesn't need a lot of maintenance. The misiles are boxed so no maintenance required. Only the vehicles which unlike a fighter plane which has literally millions of parts, vehicles like trucks don't require that significant tech to maintain.
Thanks, that explains why theirs were so much more expensive.
FYI KL has kindly reported the number of ASTROs they bought, not that they are 1:1 comparable with GMLRS, or that KL is the enemy. They can't face indonesia alone without us.
http://unhq-appspub-01.un.org/UNODA/UN_REGISTER.nsf
Originally posted by Sepecat:To Alize,
Please note that in fact companies do NOT tell their shareholders everything. In fact shareholders are not told many things. There is a lot of discretion when deciding on what and what not to reveal. Many times the shareholders will be the last to know.
For Defence Ministries & militaries everywhere, it is the same that they are all not 100 % transparent. Even the US President does not know what exactly is being funded or what monies goes for what in the so called black projects. Yes, it is of course open to abuse, but there is no perfect situation.
It is indeed not practical for foreigners to perform even the so called mundane tasks in the armed forces. For example I believe that many equipment like the air force fighters in Kuwait were maintained by foreign contract staff back in 1991 and earlier when the Iraqis invaded. The foreigners were the first ones to abandon their posts to leave the country when the bombs dropped and the bullets flew. Even had the Kuwaiti airforce be able to fight , there wud be no one to maintain the fighters to sustain a fight. If I were a foreigner working on contract maintaining a weapons system for my host country. I will do the same. It is not my fight anyway. My life is more precious than my job.
To likeyou,
Personally I think that 18 months is the absolute minimum for NS. There is actually a lot to learn and do to be fully trained & be competent. If too short , no point then in serving NS when you cannot get an effective or competent NSmen who is expected to immediately perform in time of need and crisis. The warning time to mobilize and be ready for action is usually short in times of crisis.
If mindef and authorities never try to reduce, it will not works right?
They should further review and maybe getting feedback from parents and the ns boys about this issue. And what can be done if ns reduce to 12 to 15 mths. Even before going to ns, schools already assessing the fitness on each students, school conduct swimming for each of the students, doing training in ncc or npcc to prepare for their ns indirectly. Those kind of action taken before they go into ns should taken into consideration too.
Anyway, it is still up to the mindef and the authorities whether they want to reduce to 12 to 15 mths. Becasue it really have a domino effect on everything.
Originally posted by alize:Thanks, that explains why theirs were so much more expensive.
FYI KL has kindly reported the number of ASTROs they bought, not that they are 1:1 comparable with GMLRS, or that KL is the enemy. They can't face indonesia alone without us.
http://unhq-appspub-01.un.org/UNODA/UN_REGISTER.nsf
The UN report is up to 2009 and that's 1 launcher but press reports suggest the remainder should be reported in 2010 (which should be released sometime in Jul 2011).
The munitions reported is quite interesting cos that's mainly SS-30 and SS40 rockets. The numerical numbers roughly correspond to their range.
As a guide, the FH-2000 can already reach 40km with the ERBB round. The Primus/Pegasus can reach 30km (equivalent to SS-30 rockets).
The GMLRS that equips the Himars has a reported range in excess of 70km (tested at 92km).
Originally posted by likeyou:If mindef and authorities never try to reduce, it will not works right?
They should further review and maybe getting feedback from parents and the ns boys about this issue. And what can be done if ns reduce to 12 to 15 mths. Even before going to ns, schools already assessing the fitness on each students, school conduct swimming for each of the students, doing training in ncc or npcc to prepare for their ns indirectly. Those kind of action taken before they go into ns should taken into consideration too.
Anyway, it is still up to the mindef and the authorities whether they want to reduce to 12 to 15 mths. Becasue it really have a domino effect on everything.
This consultative approach does not take into account military necessity. And it won't do to consult a bunch of dumbasses who have an interest in reducing NS.
I find having such a long NS period is an Asian cultural mentality. We are on par with South Korea's 24 months (formerly 26 months) and used to be on par with Taiwan (24 months now reduced to 1 year) (and we are not facing North Korea or China).
German soldiers served 6 months (conscription ended this year), UK soldiers 18 months (ended 1960), Swiss soldiers 300 days (up to today) during the Cold War. Greece 9 months, Turkey 15 months.
These are comparisons of modern armed forces in similar or tenser security situations, so there may be an element of kiasuism and insecurity among Asians.
Also consider that in Asia (and the former communist bloc where conscription was for 18 months to 2 years), leaders often remain leaders for far longer. They have a vested personal interest in security.
You are free to say "better play safe" but that doesn't consider the length of time necessary to master modern military operations.
Cutting the NS term further is not practical for the more complicated specializations, if you are just a plain infantryman, you probably learnt everything in the 1st 6-9 months, but for sergents and LTs, their training term is MUCH longer and they need hands on practice as well, otherwise you'll have officers who finish NS only 3 months after posting to a unit.
(3 months BMT, maybe 3 months SISPEC for the SISPEC intake, 9 months training term = 15 months) This is excluding the conversion courses to specialise, so total is ~18 months. If we reduced it to 15-18 months, the officer will graduate and go into the NSman pool without ever having been posted to a unit. NOT someone I'd have confidence passing me orders. To be really honest, the 6 months for being posted to a unit now is, opinion-wise, on the borderline of short, at least with 2 1/2 years, he would have had 1 year to get up to speed. Now, it's only 6 months of working experience. Almost like touch and go.
Some things you just HAVE to hands on practice, theory is just that. Theory.
Originally posted by slim10:Sorry, I dun play politics and we all know the SDP strategy and your SDP rhetoric. And I'm not surprised you missed all the points stated.
Read the earlier posts. Psychological defence is not about having better weapons. Efficient tax expenditure on defence is not about just having better weapons either.
The will to fight is important. But if you had to defend your family with your bare hands or with a gun, which would you pick?
Be smart pls. Stop undermining Singapore's defence esp with clueless rhetoric. I feel pai-seh for you.
me dun play politics either. I m sure will defence my family with upmost resistance but to defence my country, sadly i s ay NO.
This is not the country i used to noe n i dun need your pai-seh for me.
you can take your gun n shaft up yr ass for all i care
The lao peng never get?
Sorry AFOL, us lao peng don't get. Really kenna con, 2.5 years + low pay, no bonus.
And goverment pay into CPF, so they don't really get the $ also actually. In 5 year installments I think.
ICE, those two topics may not be totally unlinked, not like save either family or country, sometimes the best way to defend your family is through banding in a bigger group. After all, if country X invades and you try to protect your family solo, you'll be like kitchen chopper vs M-16. At least grouped in an army, you at least got an AR and arty and air support. Much more effective. And it's this "bigger group" that people call a "country", so you protect your family, and other families, in return, their guys also protect yours. Country is more than PAP. PAP cannot live without a country, a country can live without PAP, though it might be much tougher for a while.
Originally posted by Underpaid:Sorry AFOL, us lao peng don't get. Really kenna con, 2.5 years + low pay, no bonus.
And goverment pay into CPF, so they don't really get the $ also actually. In 5 year installments I think.
ICE, those two topics may not be totally unlinked, not like save either family or country, sometimes the best way to defend your family is through banding in a bigger group. After all, if country X invades and you try to protect your family solo, you'll be like kitchen chopper vs M-16. At least grouped in an army, you at least got an AR and arty and air support. Much more effective. And it's this "bigger group" that people call a "country", so you protect your family, and other families, in return, their guys also protect yours. Country is more than PAP. PAP cannot live without a country, a country can live without PAP, though it might be much tougher for a while.
Felt sad for u.
PES E ORD personel got 9 K?