Greetings! I am MAJ Low Wee Poh, the new Editor, POINTER.

After a fruitful two years and ten months as Editor, MAJ Lucy Chua has been posted to the Joint Intelligence Directorate. We wish her all the best in her new appointment.

We also bid farewell to COL Lim Kok Pheng, Chairman of our Editorial Board, who is retiring from the SAF in January 2004. The POINTER team would like to thank COL Lim for his guidance and efforts in laying the foundation for POINTER’s transformation.

As the new Editor POINTER, I look forward to bringing more quality articles to you, our readers, as well as to hearing from you about the journal and the articles in it.

In this issue, we have an interesting range of articles. For the current red-hot topic of transformation, we are very privileged to have Mr Larry Lynn, former Director, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (US) to write about “The Ingredients of Military Innovation and Trans-formation” in which he identifies eight conditions that have been found to enable or encourage innovation. He stresses that since the military is a life-and-death affair, the edge gained by true innovation can and will save lives.

The two selected articles from the Army are also centred on transformation. LTC Dan Yock Hau looks at the continued relevance of National Service in the context of hi-tech and highly specialised transformed armed forces.

MAJ Shue Pei Soon, CPT Khoo Teng Lip and CPT Ong Hon Yuh examine the main impetus driving the need for change and transformation in the Army’s training system and how the system can be enhanced to impart the necessary hard and soft skill sets for our brave new world.

Our other major topic for this issue is terrorism. We are very pleased to present articles by two renowned experts, Dr Rohan Gunaratna and Prof Carlyle Thayer.

Dr Gunaratna warns of the transformational effect of Al-Qaeda on Islamic terror groups and how the war on terror has caused them to evolve. He calls on states and agencies to network more effectively to fight networked international and local terrorism.

Prof Thayer reviews three approaches to the study of new terrorism: international, regional and country-specific. He argues for more emphasis on a country-specific approach towards analysing new terrorism so as to be better able to understand the nuances and agendas of terrorists on the ground.

MINDEF/SAF authors like MAJ Irvin Lim and Mr Daniel Tan also have contributed to this issue’s terrorism theme. The former examines maritime terrorism and security from a holistic perspective, highlights the multitude of threats and how navies, police coast guards, customs and port authorities can work together to roll back the terror threat at ports and on the sea.

Mr Daniel Tan investigates the attraction of suicide terrorism to terrorist groups. He also gives an overview of the terror suicide squads in our region and briefly suggests two possible counter-strategies.

We also have a strategic studies article contributed by LTC (RET) Sng Seow Lian which examines the
seeming contradictions and animosities in the relationship between the military and the media. It points to some lessons for the military in managing the media by tracing the history of military-media relations, in such conflicts as the American Civil War, Vietnam War, the invasion of Grenada and the Falklands War.

On a final note, we would like to take this opportunity to urge readers to be forthcoming with their feedback about the journal and the articles published. We can achieve the aim of making POINTER relevant and useful to our readers only if it reflects and incorporates your opinions, suggestions and ideas. We hope that LTA (NS) Li Lip Khoon’s letter in this issue will be just the beginning of more debates and exchanges in the pages of POINTER.

Editor, POINTER