Speech by Defence Minister Dr Ng Eng Hen, at DSTA-DSO Scholarship Awards Ceremony 2015

Distinguished Guests,
PS (DD),
Board Members,
School Principals,
Parents,
Scholarship Recipients,

Congratulations on two counts today. One, we started before 6pm, before time. This is one of the few meetings that I have started before it is supposed to start. My conclusion must be that those who are adept in science and technology, also can tell the time better. I think it fits, we are efficiency minded, and therefore time is money. So why waste time? Let's get it done. I like that from this community and I presume that you got your parents here on time because they also have a similar inclination. Second congratulations to the 101 DSTA and DSO scholars. I am sure that for you it is very exciting. I am trying to imagine what we were all like when we were 18 or 19. How it is a new chapter in your life and how thrilling it is for you and your families as you begin this chapter in your life to go to university. 

But this community you are joining, the Defence Technology Community, we call it DTC. It is a very close knit community and I will tell you that it is a community with a distinguished record of many achievements. We recently held our Defence Technology Community Pioneers Award for SG50. It was inaugural. The first one that we held which MG(NS) Ng Chee Khern was chairing. And when we held it, we called back all the luminaries, the scientists and engineers, and I asked how can this be the inaugural one? We were 50 years of development, why is it that we never held it? So the second conclusion about defence scientists and engineers is that they are so concerned about work that they don't believe that they need to laud and celebrate their achievements. They just get on with the work. But during that period and we awarded President Tony Tan, Mr Lim Siong Guan, Professor Lui and other luminaries, as we tracked the record of achievements, some things cannot be spoken because there are defence archives and can only be revealed, I suppose, maybe SG100. But it showed how critical, how pivotal a role the Defence Technology Community plays in our defence. And not only in our defence, as I will explain later, how it extends beyond the defence field to affect our national issues.

For our national defence, the DTC indeed forms an indispensable partner without which the SAF could not have progressed to what it is today – a modern, credible and professional fighting force and if you talk to professional militaries if you know of soldiers and commanders from other militaries, if you mention the SAF, they know it's respected, because they have seen us in action. Which is why every year, we pay equal attention when we recruit top talent into the SAF and DTC. And the scholarships are highly competitive and we are careful to award them only to promising, young, bright men and women like yourselves and as PS(DD) said, not only with intelligence, but with the right set of values and aptitude to assure that Singapore continues to be secure.

Our Defence Engineers and Scientists: Cornerstone of the SAF's Transformation, and of the SAF of Tomorrow

If you look back at the past 50 years, our defence scientists and engineers have been at the forefront of the SAF's transformation. Let me give you a few examples. 

Earlier this year, the Air Force achieved what we call FOC - Full Operational Capability. It means you can do everything you are supposed to do. This was for the Hermes 450, an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). And when it was launched, those in the know quickly realised what a step-up the SAF has had. This bird is no ordinary bird. You can buy UAVs, if you have the money you can buy it. That is not an issue. But what a UAV sees has to be integrated with the other units on the ground, with your Air Force, with your ships, with your units. Because it is how quickly you close the loop to be able to see something, take action, look at your threats, eliminate your threats, it is the cycle. And that kind of ability requires strong engineering and scientific capability to bring all the systems because it is not as if all your platforms come from one supplier. In fact more often than not you have many suppliers and different systems. And you have to get the systems to talk to each other, to be able to give you a complete picture. 

Let me give you another example and it is one which we recently launched.It is called the Peacekeeper Protected Response Vehicle (PRV). Some of your parents who have been in the SAF will remember the V200. It is a very familiar creature. This replaces the V200. Look at the creature and you will agree that it is again a step-up from the V200. The V200 if you meet the target or an enemy you have to climb out and shoot, you expose yourselves. Well the Peacekeeper has an advanced remote weapons system, you stay protected and you respond to your threats.

The Navy had a recent launch - the Littoral Mission Vessel (LMV) two weeks ago. This is something we are very proud of. Why? Because it was fully conceptualised, designed and built in Singapore by ST and built to meet our unique requirements and a responsive combat management system. And it is a great achievement. If anybody has said 50 years ago or even 20 years ago that one day in Singapore our companies can build their own ships with this kind of capability, I don’t think it would have been believed. But we have done it. Because of the way it was conceptualised and designed, maintenance is made easier and requires less people. On this ship, it sails with 20 over people - very few people. Maintenance is less, which means that many checks are automated and self-reporting. This translates to spending less time in the docks and more time out at sea, performing their missions. 

Why have we been able to do all of this? Whether it is the LMV, UAV or the PRV. The reason is, you don’t only have very good commanders and soldiers but you have very strong scientific scientists and engineers who talk to one another. 

On the word go, we call it the partnership of Ops and Tech - the Ops-tech integration. They sit down together and say what do you need? Look at your current model, where are the gaps and lapses, how can we improve, can we do something completely different, what do you need to achieve? Sit down together and then decide, let's do this. This is important because the challenges we have in the future are going to be very complex. You know our fertility rate has not been pumped up significantly. Mr Lee tried; many of you will remember his passion, speeches and his sometimes very innovative ideas. But it is still hovering around 1.2. If we have more marriages, hopefully it will translate into more babies a year later. It hasn’t gone up significantly. And in 10, 15 years, we will see a 1/3 reduction of people coming to National Service (NS). Not just NS, our local workforce will stop growing. Think about it. We are used to every year, new workers, and even though we are living longer and workers are working longer, the entry will be the same as those retiring. And there is a limit beyond which we can work. We can try to extend to 70 or even older. But there is a limit. Singapore will see zero labour growth if we just depend on ourselves, which means that everybody will be scrambling and trying to find ways to work smarter with less people. Which means that for us, especially for defence, we have to depend on more advanced and autonomous robots that can operate in different environments and interface with humans in missions. We will need technology, scientists, engineers, to develop these systems within the SAF. We also need them to protect us against cyber threats, and the growing use of dis-information in modern hybrid warfare. 

I am giving you a glimpse not only of the past, sharing the past, a glimpse of the future. Because when you choose these scholarships, this is the exciting career path that you have started on which will demand an innovative mindset and passionate vision to keep the SAF smarter and sharper, to keep Singapore safe and secure. Because we may have a 1/3 reduction in manpower. Look around you, the others are increasing their manpower. It is your problem, it is not theirs. And if we don’t fix the problem, it will be a liability. But I believe that with the Singapore spirit, we turn liabilities into assets, we turn vulnerabilities into strength. That is the Singapore spirit. 

Defence engineers make significant contributions to Singapore

So I am very happy to welcome you into this community, but I tell you that you have to meet very high standards because it is a 5,000 strong community with many luminaries, many famous people in your community and they have set very high standards. They started in MINDEF/SAF but their influence grew outside it because of their capabilities. And I will give you a few examples.

All of you are very familiar with Marina Bay floating platform where we hold the National Day Parade. Why did we have that platform? We had that platform because the Kallang stadium was going to be torn down. If you haven't had a National Day Parade in Kallang stadium, some of you may have forgotten that we used to hold it there. But because it was torn down, we asked ourselves where can we hold it? And you can’t hold it every year in Padang. By the way every time you have a parade at Padang, the grass dies for a few months and you have to re-turf, but it is too small anyway. So we put it to the SAF community, the engineers and said where can we hold it? It takes vision to say ok, there's water, nobody wants that real estate, why don't we put something on it? Somebody who doesn’t have the courage will say "What a silly idea" I asked you to create a platform to have a parade, you ask me to put it on water, What if people fall into the water? And how do you do it? You forget that Marina Bay Barrage was not up when the floating platform was so that its goes up and down. How do you do a parade that goes up and down - dolphin rings. Rings which float up and down with tides until of course the Marina Bay Barrage was in and you don’t need it except when you let water in. But now when we have to move out of Marina Bay platform, what are people saying? They say it is very (sayang) such a beautiful location. Air, sea, land, you can do anything. The backdrop of the Marina Bay Sands, Fullerton - Vision. A bold idea to say well let's turn our vulnerability of a lack of land to use the sea, well let's create something which is possible, let's see it first. 

You remember SARS? We had a problem because everyone in the crowd during SARS, when I say one of you has a fever, all of you will run. So how do we know that you are safe? Restaurants got depleted, hotel occupancy dropped, people dared not go for work, just as it is happening for MERS in South Korea. It was our defence scientists and engineers who said you need a mass screening tool. You can't be handing out thermometers at every junction and ask people to pop it into their mouths. It will take you very long. You need mass thermal scanners and it was the defence scientists and engineers who said it was a good idea to scan masses so that it allows big volumes of people to move in, for them to feel safe.

Last example - underground caverns. Beneath you, not here, but beneath Singapore, imagine we are storing ammunition, we are storing fuel, some people suggest that we can build cities. Where did these ideas come from? They came from somebody. They don’t come spontaneously. They come from somebody who sits down and says that I am not satisfied with the status quo. I don't believe that there is no solution. I believe that I can give a good solution and I will press on until people see that that can become a reality. This is the high standard that you must live and aspire to because it has been set by your predecessors. 

Innovation with benefits beyond defence

I urge you as new members of this DTC to continue to have this spirit to seek innovative solutions to challenges that not only the SAF but Singapore has. And I encourage this community to not only look at the SAF which is your main priority but to look beyond and therefore last year I announced the $10 million Total Defence Innovation Fund which will fund such projects. I'll just give you one example. In 15 years' time, we now have 300,000 people above 65, in 15 to 20 years' time we will have 900,000 people above 65. I go for my house visits, the 80, 90 year old mother or father is bedridden. Some are on their wheelchairs. Just imagine 87 constituencies, 900,000, each constituency, 10,000 above 65. Simple ideas, can you make and I think I have seen it. Can you make a bed which can also be a wheelchair? So that you don't have to hoist, from the wheelchair to the bed and you are still mobile. Simple solutions. When you grow old, your fingers become arthritic, you have pains. Turning a tap this way is not suitable for elderly people. Even door knobs, you've got to get our community of defence scientists and technology, young budding minds to say let's apply our minds to this problem, we can turn silver into gold. Silver aging into a gold industry because the rest of Europe is also aging. And if you can think of a solution for our 900,000 in Singapore, there will be 900 million out there that will want your products and services. It is an advantage if you can look at it that way.

Conclusion 

So I charge you to live up to the legacy that the pioneers have left to us, to make sure that our homeland continues to have a stronger defence and I charge you to take this responsibility with drive and passion for technology and innovation, for the years of good education you have, for the passionate drive you have, for the ability you have to make a difference to your generation and future generations so that we can continue to enjoy peace and security and a better life for us in Singapore. 

Thank you very much.