KUALA LUMPUR: A friend asked me to share the pictures I took during the Singapore Air Show. Honestly I did not take too many pictures during the show as perhaps I was not too interested in capturing old products. Anyway here is some of the pictures I took during the week, most of course are Singapore Armed Forces hardwares.
Well what can I say? This are things what we could have achieved if we do not waste so much money on re-inventing the wheel!
The Leopard 2 MBT. The example displayed here remained to be the the old A4 version I believe but I am assuming that they will get the A6 turret with reactive armour and new electronics to link up with other Singaporean asset for their 3rd Generation force. Wnat is the 3rd Gen Force? In short, a networked force where every body is linked together much like our hand phone society except this time every body knows every body!
Singapore’s very own SPH, a Bionix chassis developed by ST Engineering and a 155mm gun also developed by the same company. It is a 39 caliber gun of course and not the latest craze 52 calibre of the other 155mm gun out there, so the range is limited to 30km without assisted ammunition. It is light though about 30 tonnes.
Singapore Navy Interceptor Boat.
The Chinook of the Singapore Air Force. We may well see Chinooks in Malaysian colours soon as Boeing entered the heavy weight for the Nuri Replacement Tender at the last minute thanks to the increase in the budget and some modification to the original tender specifications!
The Bionix APC. The chassis was modified to produce the Primus SPH (above) and I believe the wheeled Terrex.
SAF F16D with conformal fuel tanks on both sides of the upper spine. The CFTs cannot be jettison during flight.
— Malaysian Defence
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Go Go Gooney Bird! 12 Ch-47s would definitely rock, especially set up like the USAF HH-47s. Mind you, gonna suck hind tit to set up a LZ in our terrain. They can certainly haul. These are absolutely the most in demand birds in Afghan right now.
All this transformation/RMA rubbish will result in intense micro-management and reduce the leadership in the field as senior officers and staff pukes try to fight wars by remote. I personally feel it’s largely a waste of time and effort and that units should operate with the bare minimum of chatter and noise. Dependence on technology usually results in the atrophying of perishable skills and a general decline in training as whole since the c4i is sexy and training isn’t.
Perhaps no better example exists of the dangers of this than Bokhara Market with C2 sitting with their dicks in their hands instead of rolling with a QRF and busting a way through to the Rangers.
Tragically, there is plenty of this being pimped at MINDEF with billions already having been spent with no real tangible benefit. C4i is really great becuase it’s nearly impossible to gauge success….not like a missile launch.
Simon
For all intense and purpose, the current trend for networking is an extension of the thinking that the best way to lead is to train your men as best and hard as you can and when the time come, luck will always favour the hard worker Networking is just another way to reduce the friction which will come, as they say plans will be shreds once you come in contact with the enemy.
Will technology help? In Somalia it did not, our boys in dinty Condors did. In Fallujah, the Marines said it did. For a more historical perspective, consider the German’s campaigns in the early days of Blitzkrieg (a term coined by a journalist). Most of the plans used by the troops were actually used during training and was updated for the real operations. They already knew what to do albeit in a safer environment while their opponents first the Poles and then the rest were still unsure what was on-going.
As for networking, the Germans was the first to use radios extensively in combat, It sure helped them in the first three years before they were over extended much like the Japanese in the land battles. These results speak for themselves.
My only reservations for our own networking endeavors is mostly connected to the eval/testing and the follow-on application. The German model shows (which the US and Soviet copies) expects an all arms team combining to create an overwhelming firepower at the weakest spot to gain advantage. Presently, we do not have that luxury.