Permanent Secretary (Defence)
Chief Defence Force
Chief Executive, Defence Science Technology Agency (DSTA)
Chief Defence Scientist (CDS)
Former CDS
Leaders of the MINDEF, DSO and DSTA family
President and CEO, ST Engineering
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen
Good afternoon.

First, my heartiest congratulations to all award recipients. As CDS Mr Quek Gim Pew says, much of your work is shrouded with secrecy, occasionally we trot you out to the public – today is one such occasion. I think it is right and proper that we do this annual occasion – it gives us the reason to recognise the achievements of our defence scientists and engineers, because we want to signal that the defence ecosystem form an integral part of our ability to defend Singapore.

The Value of Strategic Trust

Some of you may have followed, over the last two weeks, a number of meetings took place at the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM) and the Xiangshan Forum. During these meetings, there was a phrase that would often be used and used again, and this phrase – you would have heard it - “strategic trust”. And all of us know that trust is an essential pre-requisite for better relations – if I don’t trust you, it is very hard for me; I can meet you casually, but I cannot form a relationship, at least not for the long-term. But what is “strategic trust”? Strategic trust I think, goes beyond communication and engagement – I can talk to you, I can engage with you, but that is not strategic trust. Strategic trust goes beyond operational or tactical trust. We have to do this operation together, I have to trust you; but that is not quite strategic trust. So whether applied to relationships, between persons, militaries or even states; state-to-state, strategic trust speaks of a deep understanding of each other’s core interests. Arising from that understanding of each other’s core interests, not only do you know why and what I do, but also what I am trying ultimately to achieve. And importantly, I have your support. You cannot have strategic trust if you cannot support each other. Having strategic trust, does not only mean how you can help one another, but perhaps just as important, to understand and accept each other’s shortcomings and mistakes, because there would be mistakes.

Recently, you would have read that a Russian military plane was shot down by Syrian air defence when flying over Syrian airspace. The Syrians had misidentified the plane as from Israel. Israel and Russia are not quite traditional strategic partners but they do have a strategic understanding around Syria. This explained why there was a flurry of activity, which Israel did much to try to assuage the Russians, to maintain that trust, so that you can understand that shortcoming and mistake, not to break that trust.

If one thinks about strategic trust, if it is important between different countries, how important is it between different departments and organisations within the MINDEF/Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) family – MINDEF, DSTA, DSO National Laboratories (DSO), Singapore Technologies (ST). Without that strategic trust, progress for our common cause to defend Singapore will be limited, even as lofty and worthy as that goal is.

If you agree with me that strategic trust is crucial between departments of MINDEF/SAF, DSTA and DSO, then the next question would be, how do we build strategic trust between departments and what breaks it down? I think trust is strengthened when you deliver on your promises – if you cannot keep your word, I cannot trust you. You break it once, well I would give you a chance. You break it twice, if I am compassionate, I’ll give you another chance. If you break it three times, then I may be a fool to trust you. I think that between the SAF and the Defence Technology Community (DTC), this trust has been built up because time and again, DTC has delivered. Whether it is improving C4I capabilities, whether it is building a Battlefield Management System, more lethal platforms, or as simply as reducing mundane work through the use of technology – when the SAF receives these products from DSTA and DSO, usually it is met with “Wow, that’s a great new product! Thanks DSTA and DSO!”

For the Navy, this was the “Thank you” moment when the new Littoral Mission Vessels (LMVs) and the Meredith 400 Autonomous Underwater Vehicle came into operation. You could see it when we launched the LMVs, we walked around the bridge, a much larger bridge; they kept telling me this is the largest bridge that we have had and the type of capabilities it had. There was a sense of pride and thanks for everyone working together. For the Air Force, the Island Air Defence system, and for the Army, the Terrex and the Army Battlefield Internet. I am confident that it will be the same when DSTA and DSO delivers the Army’s Next Generation Armoured Fighting Vehicles, stand-off Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities, the Smart Air Base, and the ceramic armour. Indeed, it is a virtue that we have many positive instances to build up strategic trust. You can tell that this strategic trust occurs when the SAF proactively offers its officers to be embedded into the DTC, they have leaned forward and said, “I believe you, in fact I believe you so much I’m going to leave you some of my people in your unit so that they can co-create new ideas and capabilities.” If you think about what is happening, that they put people with you in your department, this is the epitome of strategic trust – because it is a marriage that produces offspring.

I want to be fair and balanced; I have talked a lot about how you have done very well to build up strategic trust – the converse will have to be addressed. How can trust be diminished, even broken between ourselves? I say this not to criticise, but to point out that it can happen. I think it has happened when the Terrex issue occurred, when it was impounded, there was some loss of trust. It can happen with human resource issues which involve our servicemen, which result in the image of the SAF and MINDEF being impacted, be it rightly or wrongly. Thankfully, these instances are few and far between, and we should keep it that way.

The premium and the real value of strategic trust cannot be over-estimated. In dollar terms, it is significant as we spend a significant proportion of our budget on procurement and upgrading of platforms – the time spent, not only just money, so when we have a new platform and it improves our capabilities, I think we would have gone a long way. Even operationally, trusting each other with more innovative solutions, such as through WITS, saves us hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

But the priceless value that strategic trust gives, is that it allows us all as one organisation to keep our hopes alive and aim high. Because with each successful iteration, it encourages us, the partners, to go even further, climb even higher. And it is crucial if you are scaling peaks, as the SAF and the DTC are now asked to do. Our challenge to defend Singapore in the face of internal resource constraints as well as the complexity of external threats means that we must now find new heights to ascend to fulfil our missions.

And I think this is what DSTA is doing to find new ways to hasten the pace of innovation through shorter development cycles. One example is their new partnership between DSTA and NUS Enterprise. This is an open collaboration space called DSTA@71, to partner local start-ups in Artificial Intelligence (AI), data science, robotics and augmented reality.

Commending Excellence

Today’s awardees reflect this constant endeavour to scale new heights, in partnership with the SAF. Established in 1989, the Defence Technology Prize (DTP) is MINDEF’s most prestigious defence technology prize and is awarded to those who have made significant contributions to Singapore’s defence. Let me give a brief account of the awardees today.

Professor Gan Chee Lip will receive an award for his work in securing our systems against hardware Trojans, to protect us against malicious modifications to our defence networks. Many of you may have read of the alleged “super micro spy chip”. Whether it is true or not, we regard this class of threats with great seriousness.

Dr Ng Gee Wah will be commended for his work to track and identify maritime intrusions. Dr Ng has previously received three DTP team awards in 2002, 2005 and 2011.

Dr Zhou Yingxin is our rock star, literally. His work paved the way to build our underground ammunition facility and freed up space of 300 hectares roughly equivalent to half of Pasir Ris New Town.

The four teams receiving awards have also made significant contributions. The Advanced Weapon System Team’s work which greatly reduced the chance of friendly fire and collateral damage. The team that developed the Integrated Strike Command and Control (C2) System enhanced our battle situation awareness and shortened the time taken from target identification to neutralisation. The set-up time for the C2 system has also been reduced from weeks to just days with significant cost savings, as bulky physical servers are now replaced by virtual ones.

The Venus Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV) team developed a fully unmanned surface vessel that is designed to navigate our heavily congested waters autonomously and conduct a wide range of missions from coastal patrols to underwater surveillance. Most importantly, tasks like countermine-measures and maritime security missions can now be performed with one-tenth the manpower and at much lower cost (than manned naval ships).

Last but not the least, the Intelligence Analytics Team developed AI-driven technologies that allow our analysts to retrieve information four times faster than before.

The work of these individuals and teams reflect the ethos of your community; you are like Sherpas who help the SAF and Singapore ascend greater heights, because we now operate in a rarefied atmosphere where few climbers operate. The SAF and the DTC must have strategic trust and work even more closely together if we are to scale more summits.

Once again, I want to thank you all for your hard work and your contributions to making Singapore a safer place.