A very good evening to all of you, especially the MINDEF volunteers who are with us here tonight. Tonight, we are all gathered here to honour your contributions, and I want to start off by first not only thanking you, but I also want to thank your families and your employers for supporting the SAF in all that we do. So, thank you very much—not just for being here tonight, but for all the things that you do for us behind the scenes. Thank you very much. This won't be a long speech; I usually don't give long speeches before dinner.

 First, I must share with you a little story—why this particular dinner is so meaningful and important to the SAF and to me personally. Tonight's Act Two, Scene One. Let me start with Act One, Scene One. Some of you might have heard this story before, why such occasions are important and why you are so important. For those of you who have listened to the first part, bear with me. For those of you who have not, I'll just repeat what I usually tell people.

 Now, once upon a time, I was in the SAF as well, and sometimes we'd been assigned the role of being the Officer-in-Attendance. This is to accompany foreign dignitaries who come and visit us, and very often one of the roles of the Officer-in-Attendance is to make sure that the guests have a very meaningful programme where they can see what the SAF is capable of.

On one particular occasion, I brought a foreign dignitary around to try to impress him with our capabilities. We went to the air base to show him our fighters. We went to the naval base to show him our ships. We went to Sungei Gedong to show him our armoured vehicles.

Throughout the whole day, we ran around the whole of Singapore. I could see that he wasn't particularly impressed. The last station of the day, I had to bring him to one of our fitness conditioning centres. I was feeling quite low—my morale was quite low—because he wasn't impressed at all. This was after 5pm when we went into the fitness conditioning centre, as we called it at that point in time. Then we saw the NSmen running around, doing their physical training (PT). He turned around to me and asked,

'Chan, who are these people?'

'Sir, they are my NSmen.'

'What do they do here?'

'Sir, they did not pass their fitness test; they are here for remedial training.'

I thought it was most embarrassing. He thought about it and became quiet. We went and saw the NSmen running around, doing their remedial training. Then after that we left. On his way out, he told me something which I always remember. He said, 'You know, Chan, I know what you were trying to do. You were trying to impress me. But can I be frank with you? I wasn't impressed with your fighters, your ships, or your tanks, because guess what? One day when my country has the money, we will buy them all—and better than yours. But I must also admit to you frankly that the last station got me thinking: if you have NSmen who are prepared to come back after work, after hard days of work, to train and keep themselves fit when they have failed their fitness test, that is the scariest thing—that you have people who are so determined to do so.'

Our SAF capabilities is not determined by the hardware that we have, but by the ethos, the values and the attitude.

Now I should share with you the second story. This was told to me by a foreign guest as well when I was hosted overseas. His job, in “polite” conversation, was to understand whether the SAF is really capable. So he said, and he told me ‘You know? I will go to your country and I will make an assessment on whether the SAF is really capable.’ In our circles, you know what they meant, and I thought about it and I said, ‘So, how do you know whether we are capable or not?’ And he told me something that was quite interesting. He said, ‘I don't need to go around and snoop around in your camps, and in your military installations. In Singapore, I just have to take a taxi and talk to your taxi drivers. And I want to know whether they are serving in the SAF? Whether they have finished serving? And what do they talk about the SAF?’ So I asked him, ‘you must have talked to a lot of taxi drivers, right? What have you found out?’ And this is where you all come in. He said, ‘Yeah, you know when people are serving their NS; whether is it full-time or NS, there are usually a lot of complaints.’ But what scares him a bit was this. He said, “I have met a lot of people in Singapore. They actually do not have to serve, but they serve. And that is scary.’

It is one thing to have NSFs and NSmen come in because the law says so. It is another thing for men and women from all walks of life across Singapore coming in to contribute to the SAF not because the law says so, but because they believe in it. And from him, I have always wanted to share with you this story. The more volunteers we have who serve, not because the law says so, but because we believe so, and the more powerful our SAF is.

The strength of our SAF is not drawn from just the 50,000 high-readiness core that we have, or the 250,000 full-force potential that we can mobilise in a world. They also, very importantly, depend on the commitment and support of the 750,000 ex-NSmen who have served, the 1.5 million families who are backing up every NSmen. Because when we say, in Singapore, when one serve, the whole family serves. It also depends critically on the 200,000 employers who are giving our NSmen the support. It is all these interlocking rings of support that gives our NS system and our SAF its strengths.

Today, our definition of volunteers goes beyond people who sit on the boards, like many of you here whom we are very appreciative (of). Today, if you look at the SAF and the type of people who have stepped forward to volunteer is quite amazing. You have NSFs who have extended their service because of overseas deployment; you have NSFs who extended their service because they want to complete a project – it could be NDP or a unit project. You have NSmen who have volunteered for overseas missions; you have NSmen who have “ROVER-ed” and continue to serve; you have NSmen, who having served in combat duties, volunteered to serve and extend their services in the MDES (Military Domain Experts Scheme) because they bring with them specialised skillsets. And of course, you have the SAF Volunteer Corps which are all well-known.

Then, on the other hand, there are many civilians serving with us and volunteering their time with us. The DIS, our fourth Service, has the Technical Advisory Panel. We have the External Advisory Panel on Environmental Sustainability. We have the Defence Collective Singapore who participate and help us to engage younger Singaporeans, to inspire them to serve and to contribute. We have people coming in to serve as Friends of the Singapore Discovery Center, Friends of the Singapore Naval Museum, and in time to come, Friends of our NS Gallery at the Floating Platform.

We have individuals like Suhaimi Zainul-Abidin participating in specific projects by SG Ready; Jonathan Chua from Daily Ketchup giving us fresh perspectives on how to engage a newer generation of NSF and NSmen; Suhaimi Yusuf from the media industry also giving us inputs and perspectives that perhaps we don't appreciate for a new generation. We have Gloria and Katerina - They are serving not because we need them to, according to the law; they serve because they are committed and they are convinced of our cause.

For all these, we are thankful to all of you. Now, having said that, we know that a new operating environment will present new challenges. If we look at the conflicts nowadays - from what's happening in Europe to the Middle East - the nature of warfare is changing fast. The nature of how we conduct operations is no longer just about peace and war. In between peace and war, there are many shades of gray in between that we have to deal with. That was why recently I mentioned that we are not at war today, but neither are we at peace. We will have to operate across that expanded spectrum of operational challenges. That expanded spectrum of operational challenges will require new capabilities and also allow the SAF to have more people contributing their respective specialisations to make for a stronger SAF.

Going forward, because of the different skillsets that we need across the different operations, we will be able to expand the volunteer opportunities across the entire SAF for people from different backgrounds, different skill sets, different fitness levels.

To achieve this, MINDEF will start a new unit. It will be a new volunteer management unit, whereby the unit will work with various existing units to make sure that we expand the opportunities for our people to contribute to the defence of this country. This unit will look at not just having more volunteers with special skill sets to help the 50,000 High Readiness Core. We will also bring in new skillsets, new capabilities to help the 250,000 full force potential. We will also bring in new skillsets to engage the 750,000 ex-NS men, and many of them are volunteers, because they having served, are the best ambassadors to inspire the next generation.

There will also be new capabilities that we need to build up to engage the 1.5 million families, the 200,000 employers, and also the many other PRs and foreigners who might be in our midst and are prepared to help us in widening our capabilities. So, this new MINDEF volunteer management unit will have its work cut out for it, and I hope that with this unit, and with the support of all of you, we will continuously enlarge the pool of volunteers we have in the SAF, and with it comes new capabilities from more diverse backgrounds, with more diverse skillsets, and across all ages.

Because ultimately, remember the second story: the power of the SAF is not just about the men and women in uniform. It is about how able we are to mobilise the whole of society to look at every aspect of our defence, so that when the informed observer next meets the next taxi driver, they will get a good sense of how many people in Singapore are serving, not just because the law says so. The most powerful deterrent, the most powerful message that you can tell anyone who intend us harm is that when you deal with Singapore, you don't just deal with the SAF, you deal with the entire Singapore, because the entire Singapore is together with the SAF, and each and every Singaporean, each and everyone who stays in Singapore can bring something to the SAF warfighting and peace time capabilities, and that is our aim.

So on this note, I would say that whoever we can honour here tonight is just but the tip of the iceberg, and we hope to have many more volunteers with diverse skillsets contributing to a more robust SAF.

On that note, thank you very much for your service and contributions to the SAF. Thank you for inspiring fellow Singaporeans to come forward because that is the most powerful message that we can send to the world on how seriously we are committed to the defence of Singapore to secure our future and be a free and sovereign country on our own right. Thank you very much.