Speech by Minister for Defence Dr Ng Eng Hen at the MINDEF Volunteers' Dinner Held at Goodwood Park Hotel on 26 October 2023

Senior Ministers of State,

Parliamentary Colleagues,

PSes, Service Chiefs,

Volunteers of MINDEF,

Distinguished Guests,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Introduction

Tonight's appreciation dinner for MINDEF Volunteers is a small token but I think a necessary one to recognise your important contributions, that each of you make in upholding the defence of our nation. I do not think it is either possible or desirable for MINDEF and the SAF to be solely responsible for this mission.

Contributions by Volunteers

This is especially so, when the bulk of our forces within the SAF are NSmen, and because of that, drawn from our society at large, as are our volunteers. You have often heard it repeatedly that NS forms the backbone of the SAF, and is no less a truism. Similarly, other civilian resources are mobilised during peacetime contingencies and certainly during periods of tension and war. We expect to mobilise civilian resources and that is why we exercise these routines, which is why I think our civilian resource compensation boards are necessary. Ours is a conscript military and this very nature requires greater participation and decision-making from civilian volunteers in all aspects of the SAF – whether it is mission planning, training, and day-to-day tasks and responsibilities.

I think the general public can draw comfort and assurance that you civilian volunteers are involved in these aspects of the SAF. At the pinnacle, we have ACCORD, where ACCORD members play crucial roles as bridges and sounding boards for many of our policies. Without the champions within ACCORD, especially from employer groups, I doubt that we could have the very successful discounts and benefits programmes for our NSmen. The last one, we had 275 retailers with 2,500 outlets across Singapore through the "We Support NS Campaign". You read about the spontaneous acts – famous chicken rice seller saying "If you wear uniform, I will sell you for a dollar." It shows you the kind of quiet affirmation that ordinary folks want to pay to NSmen. Similarly, we note the endorsement and even hands-on participation of female ACCORD members. We bring them in as female ACCORD members, we do not really challenge them to join us for the Women's Boot Camp but they are game and we are not about to deter them. By their very presence and participation, they raise the profile and the buy-in of Singaporean females at large.

Time does not permit me to be comprehensive but there are other examples worth mentioning. I think that parents take a lot of comfort and assurance that there is an External Review Panel on SAF Safety (ERPSS). If you remember, a couple of years back there was a spate of accidents. It was MINDEF and the SAF that decided to appoint this group. We could have gone out to say "let's tighten the safety standards as we must". However, we felt that it was better to appoint an external body to look in, because we realised that there was value in having external pairs of eyes that could evaluate and critique our safety systems, especially from experts, whether they are experts in safety or industry. Since its inception, the ERPSS has conducted 32 visits to units across the SAF and given valuable feedback to strengthen our safety systems. If you think about it, we are quite unique in that sense. Because of the recent Ukraine invasion, now many of the European states - especially the Baltic states, are relooking their NS systems. Some gave it up to reap the peace dividend and they realised a big problem. For us, we are among the very few that kept the NS system. When we started the NS bill in 1967, there was a fairly long list of countries. Over the years, that list has shrunk and we are among the few now.

Every year, the entire male population is enlisted upon turning 18 years old. Many of you now are old and wise enough to have sons who have gone through the experience. This is the only point of aggregation, for our Singapore society where the entire cohort across socio-economic divides, religions, race, come in for the same experience. It is a common experience and there is nothing I think that approximates it. When you go to the Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs), you have polytechnics, ITEs and universities, and when you go to work, you are segregated. So basically at 18, half of society in that age group comes in to the SAF, and that is why we describe it as a microcosm. Everything that occurs in that male population, we will experience it at 18 and we see it amplify. I want to give you just two examples that I think will suffice to make the point. First, demographic changes. Particularly, the proportion of marriages between Singapore citizens and foreigners. For every citizen marriage, one in three is to a foreigner. That is quite a high figure. But, what is the implication on National Service? This means that when this group enlists, one in three conscripts would have one parent or grandparents who either lived in or were raised outside Singapore. We talk about our formative experiences with our grandparents in Singapore, while they will talk about how they went back to visit their grandparents back home, wherever country they come from. These are deep formative experiences you have to address because they may not see issues similarly. We have to take into account when we bring them into NS and we form a platoon. But how do you gel a group like that? How do you train them? And for these types of challenges, we will need your inputs as volunteers, because you are also as diverse as the conscripts that we have and you will give us valuable input.

The second example is the increase in mental health issues among NS enlistees. If we look at schools and IHLs, it has gone up. It is a global phenomenon. Across all countries, mental health issues have gone up, and I am not talking about five or ten percent. I am talking about sometimes two to three or four folds. I think psychiatrists and psychologists will know it. Why? We are never quite sure. Some blame social media, some blame pressure. It is a real issue and when they come into SAF, they come in together. We had to make decisive changes to deal with this issue, because at schools or the various institutions, you deal with it piecemeal. When they come in all together, you take them out of their usual environment and you train them physically. Over the past decade, the SAF has doubled the number of psychologists and mental health staff, just to deal with this rise. Even so, civilian volunteers will also need to play a vital role – not only as professionals but as parents of children. If the rates go up, I know that whether you as a parent or a grandparent will see some of your children or grandchildren facing these issues.

Related to the larger health issues, are the medical advisory boards which involve volunteers that determine how we deploy NSFs and NSmen every year. Just think about it, we entrust a civilian board, the medical board, to decide how they are going to be deployed, not the SAF commanders. Again, our enlistees reflect the entirety of medical conditions in the male population. Our starting basis is this – just because some of us cannot run the 2.4 km in under eight minutes – we never could and still cannot – does not mean that the SAF cannot make full use of their other talents. Indeed, with a more mechanised and digitally-enabled SAF, this is what has exactly happened. There are more mental health conditions, there are also a share of other medical conditions. Despite that, our deployment rates of NSmen into actionable roles have actually gone up. We could only do this with buy-in from the medical board professionals. The recommendations made by our medical boards have allowed us to place more NSmen into roles, some in crucial vocations that I cannot tell you about.

The entire SAF order of battle has a few hundred thousand men and women together with thousands of armoured platforms and vehicles, ships, planes, and communication devices. To keep this complex machinery well-oiled and high functioning, we have now 362 MINDEF volunteers serving in 38 boards. It only works because we have high-calibre people who we can trust, who are committed [and] personally motivated to give of themselves because each believes that Singapore, our home, is worth defending. That if we as citizens do not defend Singapore, no one else will. That without security, we cannot have progress or stability.

We want to put all that into a physical token and it is called the MINDEF Volunteers Pin – it best symbolises this high calling. Those who wear it embody the spirit of selflessness and patriotism that is crucial for our national defence – it is a small pin but wear it with pride.

Current Realities

There will be challenges ahead, all of us know it, unanticipated or unforeseeable. Think about it, a decade ago, even a year before, no one predicted that there would be war in Europe – the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Just before the war, many EU countries, particularly Germany, the Netherlands, and Greece, were still planning on a peaceful and integrated Europe. And to reflect how much they believed in the idea of an integrated and peaceful Europe, many of these countries committed to 30% of their energy needs from Russia. Energy needs are long-term commitments and long-term contracts, you only go into it because you believe that the future is secure for the long-term. Post-Ukraine invasion, all these hopes and aspirations have all but evaporated. When we wrote this speech a couple of weeks ago, the situation in Middle East had not surfaced. Now, you have a turmoil – the terrorist attack by Hamas onto Israel, and Israel's need to defend itself and also to deal with it, will have devastating consequences. It will have a greater impact on Singapore society than the Ukraine invasion. I will tell you that our security footing has now gone up, our intelligence is up, we see increasing traffic in extremist sites. It is when, and not if, that we might face a terrorist attack here. We have to plan on that basis. It cannot be that images of innocent women and children being casualties to violence can leave people unmoved; it moves even people who are not that proximately involved. How much more it will move those with the same religious affiliation and with a radical bent? We must expect that security will have to be stepped up and we cannot plan on the basis that it will never happen. That is a sure way of failure. We have to plan on the basis that it can happen, that it might happen, and what do you do the day after. That is the planning mindset. But what about Asia? Can anyone be certain that there will not be a physical conflict in our region? And just think – war in Europe fought on the proxy battlegrounds of Ukraine, Middle East in turmoil, and conflict in Asia. Three simultaneous theatres, I am not sure what the implications are but they will be dire.

I take comfort in the fact that compared to the 1960s, when Singapore was still a fledgling and newly independent nation – we did not have a well-organised armed force, today's SAF because of your help, built over five decades, is a modernised, professional and respected military. I am not saying that we can deal with all circumstances, I just said that we have to work on the assumption that there may be misses or surprises. But as long as that commitment to invest in our own defence is maintained, as long as there is support for National Service, as long as we have committed and dedicated volunteers like yourselves – then I say, we have a more than even chance of surmounting whatever challenges come our way.

No one can predict the future but we can be certain that the wars of the future will be different from the ones that were fought in the past. They will be digitally enabled, man-machine hybrids, autonomous systems, unseen systems, high energy systems – all likely to be the battlefield scenarios of the future. Or asymmetric scenarios caused by terrorists. You have two extremes, very highly-based technology and low-based technology but both equally devastating.

How do you prepare any organization for these uncertainties whether they are internal or external? There is only one formula and that is people. People who are adaptive humans that can change your organisations to meet these disruptive forces. I am assured that MINDEF and the SAF working with volunteers like yourselves will provide us with the wherewithal to ensure that we will continue to have a strong SAF that can protect Singapore and our loved ones for this generation and the next.

Conclusion

Majulah Singapura. I wish all of you an enjoyable dinner. Thank you.

More Resources

MINDEF Recognises Contributions of Volunteers to Defence