Speech by Minister for Defence, Dr Ng Eng Hen, at the Defence Technology Prize Award Ceremony 2019

Dear friends and colleagues, especially friends some who are older, some who are younger and some who are forever young.

Introduction

As Chief Defence Scientist (Quek Gim Pew) says, this year's Defence Technology Prize (DTP) Award Ceremony is the 31st since it was incepted in 1989. It is a very useful annual occasion where we come together to recognise scientists and engineers in our midst whose commitment, dedication and hard work have provided Singapore with a robust national defence. Gim Pew says some stories can never be told but within your communities, some of you know it. And if you look at these individual stories, they reflect different paths taken – for some, a journey of obstacles and countless hours of tedious, even mundane, tasks before finding a breakthrough.  For others, as providence smiled, a quick resolution. But I think for either of them, a common passion and motivation that Singapore as a small country must make up for our lack of size and manpower through technological solutions, and gain an advantage through bold innovation and daring imagination.

 I do not have to tell you that you defence scientists and engineers work often in secret. And you are often surrounded by only a small group with whom you can share your frustrations and triumphs. So in that kind of setting, what is it that motivates our people? I think it is your personal motivation and commitment to a cause that sustains you. So look upon this ceremony as a rare annual event, where we let you out of the dark for some sunshine, and to thank all the defence scientists and engineers of our Defence Technology Community (DTC). Enjoy it while you can because after this we will push you back into the darkness. You are like mushrooms; I do not mean it in a derogatory way. As you know mushrooms do not need light, if you did not know that. So the nutrients from mushrooms can grow in the dark. But you are a different kind of mushroom. When I was a medical student, we noticed that the biochemistry lab, this is just (something that) suddenly came to me. There was a biochemistry professor, and he was a good biochemistry professor and that is why I think I passed my biochemistry. But we noticed that his lab was full of these racks. He must have got them from Bugis you know, quite cheap. But on these racks were stacks and stacks of mushrooms. And he was cultivating lingzhi mushrooms. So you are like lingzhi mushrooms. You grow in the dark but anyone who eats you grows very strong – not ordinary mushrooms.

So over the last three decades, the DTC has made remarkable progress, and it has helped catapult the SAF to the front ranks of a modernised professional military, with a wide spectrum of capabilities. Earlier this year, you organised and hosted the second Singapore Defence Technology Summit. When we were deciding whether we should have it, there were pros and cons, and I felt confident that once we did it we would succeed. The inaugural one went very well. In the second summit, leading defence technology policy makers, scientists and engineers came from all around the World – whether it was US, China, Russia, and other places. In many of them, you are able to get stars, who are at the front edge of emerging technologies, such as deep machine learning, neuroscience, nanosatellites and others. You know who they are and what calibre they are, they do not need to attend another scientific conference. They would not have come, if not for the standing of our DTC. They are busy people and if it is not worth their effort, they would have given it a miss. And I think their presence here speaks volumes and has paid you the ultimate compliment to the standards of our defence science and engineering that all of you have achieved. 

New Challenges for the Defence Technology Community

But as with life, neither the DTC nor the SAF can afford to rest on our laurels, many as they are. The only constant is change, and new security challenges, often brought about by new and emerging technologies themselves, are upon us. The extensive reach of social media opens another battlefront, where others can attack us, and against which, we must defend. So whether through cyber theft of secrets, information warfare or an organised persistent hybrid campaign, they are now new frontiers that need to be addressed, and for which our present working structures and tempo, are no longer adequate. It is obvious, right? So for example, you put a simple lie on the Internet and you mean for it to sow discord and distrust; it goes viral in a number of minutes. The German Bundeswehr shared with me an incident; I was there in Munich when this occurred shortly before that. There was a falsehood about their soldiers in Lithuania, part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation force, that German soldiers had sexually assaulted an underage Lithuanian girl. They knew it was orchestrated, they knew it was pushed out, and they knew by whom and for what purpose. They had to respond decisively to deal with it. And the question to ask ourselves is against this kind of threat, do we have the command structures and troops organised that way? In the real world, the SAF has a quick reaction force. But in the cyber world, what is the equivalent of a force that can respond in minutes?

 Advanced technology is neutral at its core – and the organisation that best exploits the advantages while protecting itself against vulnerabilities wins. Automation and AI-assisted operations can help us deal decisively with our manpower shortage and even enhance performance in traditional areas. At our inaugural Defence Technology Summit, I spoke to a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) official who told me that the US military was already moving into driverless logistic vehicles. It was beyond the proof of concept stage; it was moving to the equivalent of an Initial Operational Capability (IOC). And I thought, how clever. Instead of starting at the front edge of battle, where sometimes cannot be tested and decisions are too critical, you start at the backend. So we are talking about a convoy of 49 driverless vehicles, one driver. The advantage: you can just do it in the middle of the night. Only one person needs to stay up and you give out a notice that you are moving from 2am to 5am. Then if it gets lost, it is just supplies right.  But if you start at the front edge, lives are affected. So I thought how clever, I think DARPA got it right. There is a great scope at the backend of our operations to move quickly to automation for AI and for driverless aspects.

To deal with new security challenges as well as to maximise the use of technology, this kind of Ops Tech relationship must become closer. Indeed, I think now it requires our ops and tech people, that relationship, to be seamless – almost moving as one mind and one team when addressing problems. And I think that is the only way we can get ahead. It is already happening across the SAF. MINDEF staff tell me that services are now proactively inviting you to sit in with them, when they do operational planning. This is a good sign and inevitable. Some years ago, while I was at the Ministry of Education, I visited Imperial College London. I know some of you must have graduated from there, (so) you know the history. Why was I visiting Imperial College? Because we were looking for a tie-up with a medical school and we had to do our due diligence. And a story that the leaders at Imperial told me made an impact, and this one I can remember, (was) when they told me of their own transformational journey. For those of you who are familiar with Imperial, Imperial never started out as a biomedical powerhouse right, it was just classic engineering: mechanical, civil, and that is how they started Imperial because their strength was in engineering. That was the core of their strength. When I visited them, they had already become the United Kingdom's largest single health care provider, and they were in charge, at that time, of 60% of hospital beds in London. And they had shifted from their traditional departments, science and engineering departments, and their goal was to be the best biomedical, which means bio/ medical, university in the world. To enhance that kind of close Ops Tech integration, this is what they told me, they had reached a point where they had built, for example, buildings where scientists can work with and have engagements with the medical fraternity, very much like what you have built in DSTA. They tried a lot of structural things and they realised it still was not enough. There was a 最后一招 – they must have one last kungfu stroke. They had to embed scientists and engineers together with the doctors, and I really mean embed. They had to follow the doctors through their rounds, follow the doctors when they saw patients and performed procedures. They saw (how) the doctors worked when they were dealing with emergencies. Because they realised that how the medical side was doing something, and looking at problems, the solutions (of) the scientists and engineers were completely different. They would come up with different solutions from doctors. But this came about from the seamless Ops Tech integration, which must move in that same direction and out of each other's comfort zones to find innovative solutions to our security challenges.

But there is an essential ingredient for this seamless Ops Tech integration to occur and that seamless ingredient is trust. Here, I am glad that the DTC has won the trust of their SAF counterparts. I say clearly, you have won the trust. It was not given to you, you had to earn it. And today's winners exemplify how they enhanced the security of our critical national infrastructure by delivering capable warfighting systems such as the Army's Hunter Armoured Fighting Vehicle and the Navy's Invincible-class submarines.

Through common trials and successes, the SAF and DTC have built up trust and a deep understanding of each other. But that trust can be lost. I visited DSTA a few weeks back, and I was astounded that their attrition rate was the lowest ever, less than 3% – which means that your average tenure will be quite long. But one senior management pointed out that this was not always the case. She had been in the institution long enough, DSTA, and she said there were difficult past periods in the early 2000s, when the attrition rate was above 20%. You remember the periods where there were difficulties. There was no strategic trust – I do not trust you with your product, I do not trust that you know how to handle it.So a piece of advice – treasure this precious and productive relationship with each other, work at it, sustain it, and never once take the other for granted. For Singapore, our Ops Tech integration is a powerful enabler and it is our secret-edged weapon to keep Singapore safe and secure.

Acknowledgement of Award Winners

Let me acknowledge the outstanding award winners today. For the individual award recipients, Ms Karen Chong who has been instrumental in developing analytical models of explosive effects. And these models have allowed us to help better understand building damage and human injuries. Very important because it is a real threat. Ms Lye Wai Har, for her work in the design and development of complex and safety-critical software that we use in our Guided Systems. And Mr Ong Li Koon, who was a key figure in shaping and building up our submarine support eco-system and our maintenance capability.

For the team award recipients, the Materials Team and Datalink Systems Team have pioneered new and better capabilities to sharpen our warfighting edge. Their contributions have added enormously to our ability to defend and build that edge. The Hunter Next-Generation Armoured Fighting Vehicle team designed and delivered the Hunter, the first fully digitalised platform for the Army, equipped with smart algorithms like automated (target) decision and touch-to-aim functions.

Congratulations to all of our award winners today, your family members and significant others who supported you in your quest and devotion to the defence of Singapore. And a big thank you to all of you in the DTC. I lead these communities with great pride because I know the amount of expertise, but beyond that, the deep and positive value systems that our defence scientists and engineers have that have enabled us to reach where we are today. Thank you very much.

More Resources

Defence Engineers and Scientists Honoured for Excellence and Innovation in Defence Technology

Fact Sheet: Defence Technology Prize 2019 Individual (Research & Development) Award Winner

Fact Sheet: Defence Technology Prize 2019 Individual (Engineering) Award Winner

Fact Sheet: Defence Technology Prize 2019 Individual (Engineering) Award Winner

Fact Sheet: Defence Technology Prize 2019 Team (Research & Development) Award Winner

Fact Sheet: Defence Technology Prize 2019 Team (Research & Development) Award Winner

Fact Sheet: Defence Technology Prize 2019 Team (Engineering) Award Winner