KUALA LUMPUR: Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak unveiled the 10th Malaysian Plan this morning. The allocated ceiling budget for the plan is RM230 billion of which 10 per cent is allocated to the Security sector.

No details of the allocation was released and no one is saying officially how much of the RM23 billion will be allocated between defence and national security.

The unveiling of the plan is also a clear indication that the Kuala Lumpur air base and Sg Udang camp will soon be redeveloped into other things perhaps by next year. As does the Batu Cantoment camp

It will be easy for the army to move out from Sg Udang as most of the commandoes are already at the Mersing camp but it will be much harder for TUDM to move out from Sg Besi.

Going from the emphasis on national security, I am assuming that defence will probably get at the most RM18 billion or it could be even lower although I dont think it will go below RM15 billion. Najib did say that the full details of the spending plan for the next two years will be made public in August but the numbers above does not augur well for the armed forces wish list.

Listed below are projects that had been officially announced for RMK10. Most of the figures are mine however and therefore provisional, unless noted.

1) NGPV Batch II (at least RM6 billion)
2) MPSS (RM2.2 billion, confirmed figure)
3) EC725 (RM1.6 billion, confirmed figure)
4) Nuri Upgrade (RM500 million, my estimate)
5) C130 Upgrade (RM400 million, my estimate)
4) A400M (RM2.5 billion, my estimate)
6) AV8 (RM4 billion with another RM4 billion to borne out in RMK11, my estimate)

With only 6 projects we are already reaching the upper limit of my estimate for the defence allocation. And thats not counting the other projects, AWACs, M4, SPH etc.

If you count these projects you know that Mindef cannot afford all of them. One also must not forget that Mindef also need to spend a lot of money to modernise camps around the country. Oh, they also need to replace a lot of trucks…

–Malaysian Defence