Speeches
Speech by Minister for Defence Mr Chan Chun Sing at the Launch Ceremony of the Singapore Navy’s First Multi-Role Combat Vessel on 21 October 2025
21 October 2025
A very good morning to all of you.
First, let me acknowledge some very important people here who have brought us to this very important point. These are the generations of the Republic of Singapore Navy (RSN), SAF servicemen and women, and Commanders. For the past Commanding Officers (COs) of Victory, you will know that once upon a time, we started with very little. When we were first independent, we only had one or two very basic parts.
For us to be here today, to see this big ship with its diverse capabilities, is a testimony to the hard work and dedication of generations of SAF servicemen and women, and the technologies behind this. I would also like to thank our foreign counterparts who have joined us in this journey to design this big ship. On behalf of the nation, on behalf of MINDEF and the SAF, I thank you all for your service to the nation.
They say that the last 60 years of our independence have not been easy. Yes, indeed, it is true – for all of us who serve, the only easy day was yesterday. Going forward, we will face an even tougher global security environment. But what has not changed is the need for us to defend and secure our strategic lines of communications, whether in the air, at sea, or in cyberspace.
Going forward, the challenges that we have will be more multifaceted, more difficult, and perhaps more dangerous. We will have to rise to the occasion. In the past, the role of the Navy was perhaps only to defend our near shores. Today, our strategic lines of communications extend much further. That is why we need new capabilities, working together as an integrated SAF, to defend and secure our sea lines of communications, to make sure that no one with ill intent can disrupt our day-to-day lives. It is critical to our lives and our livelihoods, and also to the global economy because of the critical geostrategic location that Singapore is in.
Singapore will not do this alone. Singapore will continue to work with like-minded partners to make sure that the sea lines of communication in this critical part of the world remain open and accessible to all partners and stakeholders with an interest in this part of the world.
The third thing I would like to remind ourselves is that, indeed, we have taken a long time to craft the Statement of Requirement to get this ship approved and built. Today, I would like to paraphrase what Winston Churchill used to remind us. He used to say something like this: We spent a few years designing a building. Thereafter, the building will design us for a few more decades. That is the danger that we must always overcome – we spend a few years designing a ship, but we must never let the ship design us thereafter; not in our mindset, not in our capabilities. This is why this milestone is significant. This ship is unlike many of the ships that we have done in the past. This ship has a few features that speak to me and gives dignity when I look forward to the future. It is not a ship that is built for a specific purpose that we envisage to last for the next 20 to 30 years. I will dare say that no ship will be able to anticipate the operational needs for the next 30 years. Instead, what we need is a ship that can keep evolving with our operational requirements. That is why, when this ship is built, it is built in a modular fashion that can allow us to bring in new capabilities as our mission set evolves. This is why this is not a ship, but it is a mothership that will bring together the unmanned air capabilities, unmanned surface capabilities and unmanned subsurface capabilities. This is the new way that we have to operate and fight in the future.
Over the weekend, I was searching for the type of analogy that we will use for this ship. In fact, I found quite many in the science fiction genre. They remind me it is almost like the Battlestar Galactica, where it is not just a ship by itself, but one that is integrated with artificial intelligence and an evolving brain that can allow us to command and control not just assets under its charge, but to network with the wider SAF, so that we fight as a system of systems.
It reminds me of those Sci-Fi movies because it is not about having a fixed number of drones or unmanned surface vessels. As the mission set evolves, we will also evolve the type of weapon system and capabilities that we can have on the ship. But having the equipment alone is not enough. What we also need to evolve in the next 30 years is to make sure that our operating concepts are at the cutting-edge; that we will never use the doctrine written by the blood, sweat and tears of the previous generations as the doctrine of the future.
What we have learned from the past comes from the past. What we need to do is to make sure that we continue to scan the horizon and ask ourselves, what will be those new operating concepts that we dare to imagine that are fit-for-purpose for the future. When we integrate the fit-for-purpose operational concepts with the fit-for-purpose machines, then we will have the fit-for-purpose operational capabilities that can allow us to stay ahead of threats. This is what I hope our Navy and our SAF will continue to do, even as we acquire new weapon systems.
The last message that I would like to leave you all with today is this: Machines alone will never determine the fighting capabilities of the SAF. It is the men and women in uniform, working with our whole-of-society, that will determine the capabilities of the SAF. On that note, it is incumbent upon all commanders here, past, present and future, to take care of the men and women under our charge. When we take care of the men and women under our charge, they will take care of the mission; not just the mission of today, but the mission of tomorrow by evolving our operational concepts as needed, by being bold to test new operational concepts, working with the technologists to evolve the machines that we may not yet be able to imagine today; working with the operational people across all services to imagine operational concepts that we may not be even able to imagine today. That is how MINDEF and SAF will stay ahead of the curve, working with our partners to secure not just the sea lines and strategic lines of communications for our country, but the survival and success of our country.
On that note, I thank you all for your service to our country, especially the generations of servicemen and women, commanders who have brought us here so far. Thank you very much and have a wonderful day.
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