‘We are not at war, but neither are we at peace’: Chan Chun Sing
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Defence Minister Chan Chun Sing said the SAF is dealing with a range of threats and challenges daily across all four of its services.
ST PHOTO: GIN TAY
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SINGAPORE – Singapore has to raise its vigilance in various places given the conflicts around the world, as it is unclear if it could become “collateral in other people’s fight”, said Defence Minister Chan Chun Sing.
He noted that the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) is dealing with a range of threats and challenges daily across all four of its services.
“Today, we are not at war in the conventional sense, neither are we at peace in the conventional sense,” he told reporters in an interview on June 25.
“We are always operating somewhere in between, with different gradations. And that’s what keeps us on our toes.”
Mr Chan cited how the Digital and Intelligence Service (DIS) and other government agencies deal with thousands of attempts to penetrate Singapore’s cyber systems every day, without naming those behind these attacks.
“Sometimes it could be just people fooling around, but often, I think people are doing this very intentionally and probably with malicious intent,” he said.
It is a round-the-clock operation to protect Singapore’s cyber domain, he added, noting that a breach could mean not just a hit to the country’s reputation or the loss of some classified information, but real consequences for its power grid and financial and water systems.
There are also constant efforts to secure Singapore’s airspace and territorial waters.
Mr Chan said the air force responds to hundreds of cases every year, some requiring air defence assets to be scrambled to verify unknown threats.
“For the navy, it is the same thing,” said Mr Chan, who was chief of army before entering politics.
“The number of ships that sail through the narrow Singapore Strait, the number of boardings that we have to (do to) check and verify to make sure that the strait remains safe from threat actors, that goes into the hundreds as well and, in fact, sometimes the thousands.”
In the information sphere, people are constantly trying to shape how Singaporeans think – another threat the Ministry of Defence (Mindef) counters daily, he said.
“The type of information operations that people conduct, perhaps directly on us and sometimes indirectly on us, where we are the collateral, is also not something that we will take lightly.”
Mr Chan spoke to the media at Mindef’s headquarters in Bukit Gombak ahead of SAF Day on July 1, amid rising global tensions fuelled by escalating conflict in the Middle East.
Addressing the conflict between Iran and Israel, which also involved the US bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities
“It could be anywhere else,” Mr Chan said, adding: “It could also stoke up emotions in the region, and we must be careful that these do not spill into terrorist activities.”
There are greater security concerns because of these conflicts, he said, noting that the threats now go beyond conventional terrorism and extend into new areas such as cyberspace.
Changing threats, more leadership for NSFs and NSmen
Similarly, the nature of threats that Singapore faces has changed, Mr Chan said.
While some technologies, such as computer viruses and drones, are not new, the way and intensity in which they are applied have evolved, he said.
The lines between military and civilian use of these technologies have also blurred, he added.
Moving forward, security operations will be more decentralised, with troops operating in smaller units, he noted.
This plays into the SAF’s strengths, Mr Chan said.
The SAF has never relied on the size of its troops since 1965, but on technology as a force multiplier, he noted.
“If anything, going forward, the new generations of technology that is coming in across the world will allow the SAF to multiply its manpower capabilities even more.”
Another strength is the quality of manpower and leadership it has, he said.
Mr Chan said some believe that having full-time national servicemen (NSFs) or national servicemen (NSmen) is a disadvantage for the SAF.
“We never think so, because by having NSF and NSmen, we are able to have the best across society operating our systems, participating in the design of our systems.”
This is why the SAF can operate with more decentralisation, he added.
There will be more leadership opportunities for these groups going forward, he said, noting that this does not just refer to an increase in the number of soldiers attending SAF leadership schools, he said.
It also means more leadership at different levels and more of such opportunities for many NSFs, he said.
Mr Chan gave an example from the DIS, the SAF’s newest service
“Each and every one of them must be able to take (on) leadership because of the technology that they are using and applying.”
Prudent spending
Going forward, the SAF will continue to spend prudently and in areas that will “give us bang for (our) buck”, Mr Chan said.
It will not simply target a certain amount of expenditure but ensure that spending is sustainable because building new capacities takes many years, he said.
“What we don’t want is what we call the ‘feast and famine’ kind of spending, where you buy a lot of things when you have money, and then you find that you can’t maintain it,” he added.
“That’s not how we stretch the defence dollar.”
Over the last few years, defence spending has hovered around 3 per cent of Singapore’s gross domestic product (GDP), Mr Chan noted.
This does not include security spending outside Mindef, such as on the Home Team and cyber security.
The minister was answering a question on whether Singapore’s current spending is sufficient given the global security situation.
There have been calls in the region for an increase in defence spending.
At the Shangri-La Dialogue in May, US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth asked American allies in the Indo-Pacific to raise their defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP
Mr Chan said the SAF has been fortunate to have the public and political support to spend up to 6 per cent of GDP.
There will be areas that will require more spending because of the new nature of warfare, he added.
“Today there are also new opportunities for us to look at other low-cost options to complement what we have and what we need,” he said. “We will continue on that trajectory.”
On adopting new technology, Mr Chan said the SAF is constantly looking at emerging tech such as artificial intelligence, but does not want to be caught up in fads.
“We’ve been looking at many of these technologies for many years. We want to be able to apply them to what we call ‘tangible use cases’,” he said.
“So, it’s not applying things in general, but very specifically how it helps us.”
While the SAF constantly tracks changes to warfare, such as the increased use of drones and cyber attacks, its challenge is to predict what new threats will emerge in the future, Mr Chan said.
This is so that the SAF can put in place programmes to develop capabilities to counter these threats even before they emerge and be able to deal with them by the time they do.
He made the point that the SAF does not build new capabilities just because there is a new defence minister.
After a recent Cabinet reshuffle,
“Many of the capabilities that the SAF has today are built up through the generations,” he said, including those that were mooted during or before his stint as chief of army from 2010 to 2011.
That is why many SAF projects are classified, so the force remains ahead of the curve, he said.
“We don’t always publicise all that we do, but at the appropriate time, we will reveal those capabilities to let Singaporeans have the confidence that we are ready,” he said.
“And there’ll be many capabilities in the SAF which we will never reveal. The fact that we don’t have to reveal them, we don’t have to use them by the time they get retired – to us, that is success.”
