Oops, Singapore has been sussed on their F15 numbers!

[MAN Flyer]

or how many F15's they really have ?.

BTW I think we have 40 F15s

Officially 24...

Looks like one of the regions worst kept military secrets is 'out'. If you can call an article in Janes Defence Weekly being 'out'.

There is an article in this weeks JDW titled 'Singapore quietly expands F15 fleet'. I am sure you need to subscribe to read it but the article mentions aircraft with similar serial numbers seen at Mountain Home AFB in the US, a letter to the House of Represenatives on some more F15's then Boeing taking out civil aircraft registrations for some 'F15SGs' numbered N361SG, N363SG etc...

Now this can be looked on two ways by Singapores neighbours. First is that they don't want to upset anyone with a big order up front, or they are sneaky bar stewards by not announcing how many they really have.

[LionCity]

At a Price tag of USD 125 Million per unit + support, we probably spend a total of USD 3 Billion on these 16 aircrafts. In my opinion, better to give us more butter than guns. Better pension fund returns and medical. When we asked them for better medical, they said we have to raise taxes. Can understand the need for arms for a small nation but is this over the top and especially doing it on the sly.

[9V-SIA]

We live in a bad neighborhood.

Maintaining a strong armed forces is for deterrence.

Expensive but cheaper than fighting a war!

The danger for Singapore is an irrational neighbour who runs their economy to the ground, facing a groundswell of discontent, start blaming us for their woes to distract from their own incompetence....

[Nick C]

Just need 10 more for the fly past next year.

http://www.defensemedianetwork.com/s...ic-air-forces/

Believe the F-15SGs have some degree of usability within the maritime environment. Could possibly mean that the MPA replacement might be drones.

[LionCity]

We live in a bad neighborhood.

Maintaining a strong armed forces is for deterrence.

Expensive but cheaper than fighting a war!

The danger for Singapore is an irrational neighbour who runs their economy to the ground, facing a groundswell of discontent, start blaming us for their woes to distract from their own incompetence....

Valid point and I agreed with you. Permit me to explain: question I am asking is not whether arming the nation is important or not but how much is enough is the question. Buying more sophisticated armaments also creates an arm race among neighbours and facts liked these cannot be secret forever. I will also ask the question is whether buying those in top of the range aircraft will cannibalize the budget for proper maintenance/servicing of other military equipment, training of the personnel etc..In addition, better to treat NSMen with better allowance, CPF contributions, educational funds...after all these are the guys who sacrificed two years of loss earnings and actually people that are manning, maintaining those billion dollar machines. You need the people to be behind the defence of the nation and increasing the income gap or reducing the butter are certain not prudent ways for total defence. The question many non-elite or young Singaporeans are asking these days are who are we defending? Sad isn't it.

The sinews of war..is infinite money. Cicero.

[jammed]

To frame the issue as choosing between butter and guns is Econs 101, yet the complexities of striking that balance, the context (which evolves over time) that needs to be taken into account, etc is lost in that alluringly simplistic equation.

I agree that seeking to fudge numbers of military platforms (if that is indeed the case), in the increasingly transparent environment, is plain stupid. American sources of hardware, in particular, can easily be verified through multiple channels of information.

But as 9V has mentioned, some geo-strategic-political fundamentals can never be changed. It is so sexy to say that the defence budget could go feed the poor, build more hospitals, improve education, etc., but - the politicians can't say it, but I'll be politically incorrect to state the reality: the poor and income inequality exists in every society, and while Singapore can always do better, and is trying to do better, find me a country that has perfected to Gini 0.

As to whether the expenditure will cannibalise budgets of other systems or go into improving the welfare of servicemen, I'll leave the experts to field those. Suffice to say that my own experience as a reservist and interactions with serving servicemen attest to much much better personal equipment and service conditions than when I enlisted in the 1980s.

As I told me son, our military is strong so that we don't have to fight; we don't die fighting, we make others die trying.

In peaceful times, it is easy to talk about scrapping NS and cutting defence budget, but look at Ukraine, look at Kuwait (1990) to return to the fundamentals. Even Switzerland maintains a strong credible defence to preserve its neutrality.

But I'm belabouring the point - I am well aware that in the current political climate, mine may be the minority and politically incorrect viewpoint. No offence to anyone, but this from the heart of someone who served.

[LionCity]

No offense taken Jammed and I do respect your kind views and raised some valid points.

To me still leaves the question of how much is enough. Every Insurance agent or general will tell you it is never enough. I don't blame the insurance agent, he has to make a living and in the case of the general, he doesn't want to be blamed for losing the war and he wants more and better weapons (perhaps boost his bragging rights).

I also noted that an ASEAN acquired the Leopard 2 MBT after Singapore acquired the Leopard 2 MBT. This Asean's country economy and government is growing from strength to strength and they will more money to spend. So what is Singapore to do next? Their generals and our generals will clamour for more and more. Are we in a vicious cycle?

USSR and USA were in an arms race but they did not fight a single war directly. Many analysts actually said that the collapse of the USSR was the result of over spending on the military. Same thing happened to Habsburg Spain despite the riches pouring from the New World.

Policy makers need to be mindful of that and get the balance right. For a couple of matters, I did not think Singapore has such a fantastic GINI from what I read and had been going downhill and someone told me (whether true or not) was only better than HKG for developed countries. Again, one can argue that GINI is not an all encompassing measure. Maybe I am too much of a pessimistic person, I am worried about the signs of decline of this country and I will be less concerned if GKS is still around. I am afraid in Singapore it is nothing sexy about spending more on hospitals or other infrastructures. As anyone in the medical field can see that patients are put in tents outside of the hospital or rushed out of hospitals to make way for new patients, patients are restricted to access to certain types of treatments due to budget, we are short of trained doctors because our schools cannot produced enough doctors, a new subsided flat is not really a subsided flat that has maybe doubled in price since 2006 while at the same time we have the best equipped armed forces in the region. I am all for a strong army but we need the right balance. But that is just me and best each of us form our own opinion. I am too much of a believer in a holistic approach to many things including defence.

Who makes the money? The Merchants of Death.

This really troubled me.

Anyway, good night and cheerio. Sorry to close this discussion from my side as I need to focus on the matters that helps feed the family. But I did enjoyed the kind discussions and good to hear and absorb differing views.

[inix]

I'm with jammed on this. People have short term memory. If we didn't have a decent fighting force, Dr M would have cut our water eons ago. Only the fact that we have the best armed, and strongest military in SEA is the strongest deterrent against them doing it. And that's just 1 point.

People also forgot that we're not exactly a country where we actually lack money. Our GINI is high isn't exactly because we can't offer better social services, but more because our government is so far right that they don't believe in better social services. All in the name of self resilience???. All these is changing, slowly but surely. But still, we still have plenty of money for us to defend ourselves AND improve the services. They are not exactly mutually exclusive.

[cscs1956]

We live in a bad neighborhood.

Maintaining a strong armed forces is for deterrence.

Expensive but cheaper than fighting a war!

The danger for Singapore is an irrational neighbour who runs their economy to the ground, facing a groundswell of discontent, start blaming us for their woes to distract from their own incompetence....

Yes, some people just never realize what type of situation and location we are in.

[MAN Flyer]

Yes, some people just never realize what type of situation and location we are in.

What's this, a post praising the action of the authorities on Singapore ?.

Have you had a blow to the head ?.

[MAN Flyer]

The article has now made in into this weeks Flight International / Flight Global.

[MAN Flyer]

http://www.janes.com/article/58959/r...-15sg-squadron

[lcpteck]

Yes, some people just never realize what type of situation and location we are in.

I totally agree. We have everything to lose...

[flyguy]

in the last couple of days during the Parliamentary seating, the Defence Minister say that RSAF will buy more of the advanced and latest F16s