355 / 409
EPILOGUE
339
SIXTEEN
Director, General Staff who was then mainly the head of the Army and precursor to Chief
of Defence Force,) also admitted the holders to the top policy-making body of MINDEF,
namely MINDEF HQ. MINDEF HQ met weekly and each ACGS ran the gauntlet—in their
respective areas of responsibilities—of the Minister for Defence and the political hierarchy,
plus the two Permanent Secretaries and Directors of MINDEF Divisions. It was an arena that
made or broke reputations, as well as a training forum for senior management which money
could not buy.
As far as uniformed officers were concerned, the earliest configuration of MINDEF HQ
provided for CGS, Commander Air Force, Commander Navy and the Assistant Chiefs of
General Staff only. The ACGSs coordinated all the land force establishments, joint operations
and some such as the Medical HQ, field logistics installations and Signals, which overlapped
into the two other services. Commander, Air Force and Commander, Navy represented their
own commands but worked with senior civilian heads of department in MINDEF such as
Deputy Secretary (Air Force), while in the initial stages, the Second Permanent Secretary directly
oversaw the development of the Air Force. Directors of Security and Intelligence Division,
Logistics, Manpower and Finance covered all the other departments in MINDEF. As the SAF
grew, the General Staff, which was essentially Army, was replaced by the Joint Staff (J-Staff)
and the post of Chief of Army on a co-equal status with Chief of Air Force and Chief of
Navy. Concurrently, the post of Chief of Defence Force was created and the Assistant Chiefs
of General Staff were dropped from MINDEF HQ. The configuration of MINDEF HQ
was altering every now and then to reflect these changes and also take into consideration new
civilian appointments such as Deputy Secretary, Policy, Deputy Secretary, Administration, etc.
Among the First Batch, Eng Song King, Gurcharan Singh, Kwan Yue Yeong, Ramachandran
Menon and Ng Jui Ping were appointed ACGSs in the rank of Lieutenant-Colonels, when
these appointment were still included in MINDEF HQ. Menon and Jui Ping both did stints as
ACGS (Personnel) and ACGS (Training). Subsequently, Jui Ping was appointed Director, Joint
Operations after commanding 3
rd
Division and later, Patrick Choy Choon Tow, Director, Joint
Intelligence, both in the rank of Brigadier General. In these capacities they were Members of
MINDEF HQ. Jui Ping was later appointed Chief of Army succeeding BG Boey Tak Hap, the
first scholar to hold the appointment, who left the service to head the Public Utilities Board.
Before his appointment as Director, Joint Intelligence, Patrick Choy had headed the Training
and Doctrine Command. In the Air Force, Gary Yeo had become the Deputy Commander and
was promoted to Brigadier General in July 1989. As a group, over this period, the First Batch
was at the height of its status in the SAF, being in positions to influence key areas of policy in
the land forces if not the SAF as a whole. In the early 1990s, there were two appointments
from among them that also offered similar scope, namely Chin Chow Yoon who headed the
SAFTI MI Development Project during which tenure he was promoted to Brigadier General
in July 1992 and Colin George Theseira, who commanded a Division in the course of which
he was promoted to Brigadier General. In between however, several First Batch officers held
key appointments: Chief of Artillery, Chief of Armour, Director, SAFTI/Chief Infantry