Originally posted by Underpaid:Li, mercs are NEVER a good idea to base your army on. Ask Malacca.
And they will never be loyal to Singapore, Singapore is their employee, not their home, they finish their tour and go back to their family, bye bye. It’s like expecting construction workers to develop loyalty to Singapore just because they worked 5 years here. Possible to happen, but seriously unlikely.
And not to mention supply of your “special forces” then ends up depending on other countries. Right now, if we had went “Gurkhas = SOF”, Nepal is planning to cut supply of soldiers to other countries to improve its’ image, we would have been stripped of our whole SOF force in one PR decision.
And “fitness” is built up. The reason Singaporeans are less fit is not because we’re “weaker”, I know some of our guys who train with SEAL and GSG9 and they pulled through, it’s because we spend a lot of our time on our ass in class, in front of the TV and computer instead of running around. Go to any gym and look for the long term exercisers and see if they are “less fit”.
Mercenaries, especially Gurkhas, still have very relevant niche roles to play. Gurkhas have fought very successfully alongside British and Indian forces in modern times. We can definitely use them in their traditional role of elite light infantry, one battalion alongside our many.
It just does not gel with the Government's gospel that defence falls on Singaporeans' shoulders alone. If we successfully implement a Gurkha unit, the people will question NS even further.
Secondly, if you look at how they are treated viz their children's education and residency rights, let's just say they don't fit into the Government's population plans for Singapore. For their university-age children, agreeing not to take PR is a condition for having their university education paid for.
SDP is unqualified to even suggest what to cut...
They have no information nor the training or professionalism to understand the threats and possible threats that Singapore faces.
These are not imaginary threats. Just look around the whole south east asia - why is everyone bumping up what they have....its not really an arms race, but not every 'friendly country' remains friendly forever - its a fact of life. We'll be stupid to assume everyone is a friend - forever.
Having only professional ghurkha or special forces...is stupid idea. It is nothing compared to the threat of full-on combined arms warfare with artillery, armour, missiles, airforce and navy.....