KUALA LUMPUR: Although the 9th Malaysian Plan (9MP) Mid-Term Review have been announced last week, the exact details concerning the defence sector have yet to be revealed. It must be noted that the full details of the defence sector allocation was never publicly annnounced when the plan was tabled about two years ago.
Malaysian Defence have yet to get full details of the review but was informed cuts to the defence budget would mostly affect the Army although projects already approved for the 9MP remained funded. However, if the economy gets worse, these projects may well get deferred also.
What projects? The Army MBT combat and gunnery simulator, MR Anti-Tank Missile, the Air Force airborne and early warning system, the medium range AAM and the Navy’s multi-purpose ship project.
What about the Nuri Replacement Programme? Its definitely on. Apparently the money is allocated under the Prime Minister Department’s Special Allocation and not under the 9MP. It was never funded for 9MP in the first place as it was allocated last year after the Genting Sempah Nuri crash.
Which helicopter? My guess is good as yours. But at the moment, all the helicopters that met the tender requirements remained under consideration with the Merlin and Cougar leading the pack. My bet is still on the Merlin but the Cougar remained a strong contender.
My personal choice, the BlackHawk never met the tender specifications.
-Malaysian Defence
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The question remains….how many and for what? A logical progression would be to buy the birds in 2 or 3 tranches with the initial ones as bare bones lifters with limited mission equipment like a FLIR and a winch. These would be used for conversion purposes as well. Later tranches can be set up as gold plated as budgets allow for specialist roles like CSAR. Note, even the UK lacks dedicated CSAR platforms….they now run an ad hoc capability called JPR with whatever assets are to hand.
Rather than a CSAR bird, I prefer if they would set up the later tranches as Special Ops birds (really quite similar in many ways) with JPR as one of the missions. All the ‘bling’ like IFR, MLWR and TFR is all quite transferable as is the extreme flying.
Of course I’d really like to see the establishment of a UK style Joint Helo Force and a SOCOM instead of the little disjointed empires now extant.
Simon
http://proceedings.ndia.org/7040/19%20Bates.pdf
Cut and paste the above link for the PPoint of UK JPR. The process of cycling crews through conventional SAR ops is very interesting.
We are faced with many of the same issues that the UK has, namely a lot of commitments and not enough resources. Indeed our conventional SAR capability is quite pathetic considering that the Straits of Malacca is the most heavily transited stretch of water in the world. That, the lack of a Lifeboat Service etc. is directly attributable to the Third World mentality we have towards safety and security in our territorial waters. Aiya….work OK mah…..why waste money?
This is why we lost Peda Branca (sorry but that’s the name now).
Simon
Interesting document, Simon.