Speech by Senior Minister of State for Defence Mr Heng Chee How at the IGNITE Innovation Symposium 2024 On 23 Jul 2024

Permanent Secretary, 

Chief of Defence Force, 

Senior Commanders,

Distinguished Guests,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

INTRODUCTION

This year marks the 42^nd year of our official innovation movement within MINDEF/SAF and the Whole-of-Government (WOG). As our organisation grows, it will be that innovative spirit that ensures our relevance and effectiveness. So, we must keep up this momentum. Let me congratulate all award recipients who embody this quest and strive to make things better.

INNOVATION AS A STRATEGIC IMPERATIVE

As a military organisation, we are learning many lessons from the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. These two are real-time, and they have employed the latest thinking and concepts, and overturned old concepts of conducting wars. One key lesson is that potential users through innovation can pose outsized threats using relatively low-cost platforms. There are many examples. Ukrainian soldiers and civilians modified low-cost, commercial-off-the-shelf drones for surveillance and strike. Our Defence Minister showed a picture in Parliament of one such modification – the Ukrainians used a grenade and they fitted a simple shuttlecock onto that grenade, so that the shuttlecock acted as a stabiliser. The grenade was then dropped from a drone. These drones, together with modified first-person view (FPV) drones that could cost USD $500 or less, can then be scaled up many folds. You can therefore see the disruption that can be brought on the enemy at a very low cost, compared to conventional methods. Ukraine’s soldiers also used swarms of naval drones against Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. So much so, the Ukrainians broke Russia’s dominance in the Black Sea and were able to resume maritime exports, with export volumes from the Greater Odesa ports returning close to pre-war levels.  

Moving onto another example in the Middle East, Hamas, a terrorist organisation, was extremely innovative and effective in using low-cost rockets, drones, paragliders, and motorcycles in their surprise attack on Israel on Oct 7 last year. At least from these two recent examples, we can see that innovation can be extremely powerful and can overcome even conventional platforms. Sophisticated expensive equipment provides no certainty of safety when faced with an innovative enemy. Now we speak of these two wars because they are with us in real-time in the world, but this is not new. About a quarter-century ago, the significance of September 11 was that there was an attack on the US mainland, against defence systems which they were very confident of. They were probably looking out for missiles, or fighter jets; nobody imagined that a commercial jet could be weaponised. If you use commercial terms, they had overturned the business model. They came up with a different way of doing business, and by doing so, they overcame many of their constraints. For example, if you want to fight a conventional war with conventional weapons, most of these are not cheap, they are expensive. Why this was workable, was because your enemy was using the same paradigm, they also had to resort to expensive things. Therefore, it was a case of expensive versus expensive, and you could do the sums and you could carry on the war. When someone can think innovatively and overturn that business model, and they can find something that is relatively cheap, then the equations are different. If you have to constantly use expensive to counter cheap, it is not really just a question of military equipment. It is also economics and so on. As we know now, everything that can be weaponised has been weaponised. In this total, all-dimensional war, we have to take the lead. So, I am very glad that indeed, we are carrying on with great momentum, this innovative spirit.

OVERCOMING FUTURE CHALLENGES

These recent examples provide salutary lessons and cautionary tales for any military establishment such as ours. They teach us that good equipment and organisation are essential for us to be effective – but they may not always be adequate.To win the battle, we must always have people who can think or do things differently, to change the rules of the game as they were, and to gain an advantage. The side that possesses persons with such aptitude has great advantage and the side that cannot adapt to changing or challenging circumstances will likely lose.

That innovative spirit within organisations like ours needs to be continually nurtured and that explains why the Innovation Symposium is held every year. Over the years, that emphasis has borne fruit. Because of that momentum, our Navy’s Maritime Security Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV) will be fully operational later this year. Army soldiers will have more micro-unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to use as well.

But innovation must not only be top down, it also needs to be bottom up, to permeate the entire organisation. I am glad that our servicemen and women are responding to this call. Among their ideas, modification of rifles with a Smart Fire Control System to target small drones – a cheap way to attack cheap things that the adversary will be launching against us; a DIS team that created the CyTEC Metaverse to simulate a realistic digital training environment, much like a range is to small arms.

MINDEF/SAF’S COMMITMENT TO INNOVATION

 The Army has launched a Reimagine Our Everyday campaign to encourage its soldiers to think of ways to improve lived experience every day. The Navy is pushing for digital innovation using Microsoft Power Platform low-code tools, allowing service personnel with basic coding experience to create apps. In-house support services and training courses will enable service personnel to deploy new app products within a month, and modify them in response to feedback. These initiatives are already bearing fruit. For example, the Navy’s in-house team took two days to create the prototype for a Competency Tracker Application (CTA) to replace hardcopy logging and updating of personnel’s competency status.

Similarly, the RSAF Agile & Innovation Department (RAiD), with its in-house Rapid App Prototyping team produced Project ODETTE, to enhance the reach and dissemination of UAV video feed across the SAF. The product was developed within two months and was trialled in Exercise Wallaby last year. As a result of that successful trial, footages from Exercise Wallaby which was held in Australia could be viewed real-time both in Australia and Singapore.

IMPROVING ORGANISATIONAL EFFICIENCY THROUGH GROUND-UP INNOVATIONS

This year’s award recipients continue to showcase a range of ground-up innovations. Project Roar by the 3^rd Division did away with hardcopy during mobilisation. Registration and updates of attendance reporting were fully digitalised through mobilisation stations, and that saved more than 300 man-hours per mobilisation exercise. As a result, those who were planning and running the exercise were happier, and so were the NSmen who participated. This template will be scaled up into the Smart Mobilisation system developed within the OneNS application.

The RSN’s 8^th Flotilla repurposed commercially available magnetic polyurethane patches, originally meant to fix industrial leaks, and they developed the Rapid Hull Damage Repair Patch for damage control use. As a result of this innovation, a task that used to require three people now just takes one person. Air Force Engineers at the 7 Air Engineering and Logistics Group (AELG) also developed a Digital Data Analysis Kit for the F-15SG Landing Gear System, reducing the troubleshooting time by 80%, reducing the manpower required by 50%, and equally important, making it safer for important jobs to get done.

CONCLUSION

Therefore, across MINDEF and the SAF, we must keep up this spirit of innovation.In this way, we keep our organisation nimble, sharp and quick to adapt crucial tools that will help us overcome security challenges that will continue to arise.

Thank you very much. 

Spirit of Innovation key to MINDEF and SAF’s Operational Readiness and Success

Factsheet: IGNITE Innovation Symposium