Singapore's military find a base away from home
By Brendan Nicholson
November 22, 2005
FEW Australians would be aware of the large scale and the closeness of military co-operation between their country and Singapore. While Australia's defence planners face the task of defending a vast and thinly populated landmass, their opposite numbers in Singapore face the opposite problem.
When jets of the Republic of Singapore Air Force take off from the island, they are in Malaysian or Indonesian airspace within about three minutes. This places severe restrictions on training.
As a consequence, the RSAF spends much of its time in and around Australia. Singapore spends a higher percentage of its national income on defence (4.9 per cent) than anyone else in the region, including Australia (2.7 per cent), and consequently punches well above its weight.
The island is Australia's closest defence partner in the region. Each year, up to 6000 Singapore soldiers train at Shoalwater Bay in Queensland and enough equipment for a light armoured battalion is stored there.
Helicopter pilots train at the Australian Army Aviation Base at Oakey, Queensland, and at Tamworth in NSW.
Singaporean instructors have trained hundreds of Singaporean fast jet pilots at the RAAF base at Pearce in Western Australia.
In a speech in May, Australia's high commissioner to Singapore, Gary Quinlan, said the two countries were the closest allies in the region in the war against terrorism.
Australia, he said, owed its tiny ally a great debt of gratitude for thwarting a plan to blow up Canberra's high commission there.
He described how, at 11am on a Saturday in early December 2001, he was telephoned at home by a staff member who said he'd been given an urgent briefing by Singapore's security authorities and needed to talk immediately.
"I said 'fine, give me half an hour to shave and get dressed'.
"He said, 'no I need to see you immediately'.
"Fifteen minutes later I was being briefed on Jemaah Islamiah, a group previously unknown as a terrorist organisation, and on their planned operations in Singapore, including a truck bomb attack on the Australian high commission."
"The bombings in Bali ... showed incontestably what a savage threat the region faced," Quinlan said.
"A strong and capable Singapore is a direct national interest for Australia."
The Five Power Defence Arrangements involving Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, the UK and Malaysia go back about 35 years to a time when Singapore had split from Kuala Lumpur and the region was recovering from Malaysia's Indonesian Confrontation, British forces were withdrawing from Asia and wars were under way in Indochina.
Forces from the five countries hold regular training exercises. Australia provides a neutral commanding officer based at Butterworth in Malaysia.
Quinlan said these arrangements were being re-energised to deal with terrorism, especially the threat to the huge volume of shipping passing through the region.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/singapores-military-find-a-base-away-from-home/2005/11/22/1132421612611.htmlGlad to know that there is still some sanity left over in Melbourne.