The SAF is Productive Because there are no foreigners in the SAF

I was appalled when I read the following blog post describing MP Koo Tsai Kee's remarks that the SAF is productive because it does not employ or conscript foreigners.

What he is saying does not make sense.

Why the SAF does not have foreigners

The SAF does not have foreign workers because they CHOOSE not to. It has nothing to do with productivity. Using my common sense logic, the SAF chooses to conscript male Singapore citizens and recruit male and female citizens into the armed forces mainly because of national security reasons. I.e. it would be somewhat risky if you were to engage in war against a country and its nationals were in your armed forces. You would not have the confidence that these foreign nationals will betray their employer the SAF to the foreign country.

However, it is interesting to note that recruiting foreigners to do security jobs in Singapore has its precedence. For instance, the Singapore Police Force maintains a Gurkha contingent which is staffed by Nepalese from Nepal. They are foreigners but serve in fairly sensitive security positions, e.g. protecting key installations in Singapore including airport, residences of our PM, President, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Whitley Detention Centre (where the infamous Mas Selamat managed to escape).

Maybe the SAF Should Have Foreigners to Boost Productivity

Hence, how you staff your armed forces is a function of national security and defence policy and has not much to do with productivity. However, maybe we should all think out of the box and welcome foreign talent in the Singapore Armed Forces following the French model.

France has had the French Foreign Legion which is staffed by foreign volunteers who bear arms to defend the French Republic led by French Officers. It serves them well in overseas security missions e.g. defence of French Colonies (French Guiyana) and in missions to Afghanistan and Iraq.

So perhaps we should take MP Koo's point and flip it on its head. Perhaps we can even IMPROVE productivity of the SAF if we deliberately CONSCRIPT and RECRUIT foreigners. After all, international banks in Singapore are well staffed with foreigners and we can see from the global financial crisis how global banks are able to single-handedly steer the world's economy to the brink of financial apocalypse and in the process earning many investment bankers huge bonuses (on taxpayers' funds). If we trust foreigners to manage our money in the top banks in Singapore, then we should be able to trust them to defend potential aggressors who may seek to deprive us of our money (and lives).

Foreigners Can Be Cheaper, Faster and Better

For all you know, foreigners may be cheaper, better and faster in defending Singapore because you can pay them more than the $300-$500 monthly allowance (During my time was closer to $200-300) and I believe they can accept a regular's pay of $1,000 to do a Corporal or a Private's job in the infantry. My previous NSF and NSmen job in the SAF I would gladly allow to be outsourced to my eager and hungry friends from the People's Republic of China, India and ASEAN.

Many of us who have served full time national service as well as reservist can testify to how unproductive and inefficient the SAF is. This is attributed by the fact that the SAF is one huge bloated bureaucracy that needs tonnes of talc (plastic wrapper for map overlays) before it can fight a war. No talc, no war.

It has grown bloated and inefficient because of its reliance on CHEAP Singapore male citizen conscripts that are paid minimum wage of $300-500 a month to risk their life for the country. In between, the NSF is made to do combat roles, admin support to the regulars, be messboy in WOSE mess or Officers' mess.

Why should the SAF be productive when it gets the highest amount of appropriations from annual budget to the tune of $13+ billion Singapore Dollars a year!

I can cite many personal examples of unproductive time in NS. Wake up at 4am plus to reach rifle range by 5+ or 6am only to realise range warden only comes in at 7am so wait 45mins to 1 hour for someone to open the range. Did not anyone check or inform the range warden to come in?

How about waiting around for instructions? At parades, waiting for CO to come in etc... Not forgetting NS in processing and out processing. Out processing in particular for reservist is the most slow and unproductive time of the reservist In-Camp Training. Men spend half a day waiting outside of bunks to be handed over and equipment to be returned which usually involves only a few key personnel.

Productivity and the SAF are Misnomers

Many NSmen and NSF understand the situation I have painted. It pains me that an MP who is also the Minister for State for Defence (a paid salary position) in defending his own organisation's "productivity" cannot see its own organisation's flaws when most of the 250,000 NSmen who have eyes and ears know what is happening on the ground. The SAF is not perfect. It has improved over the years but it has still a long distance to go before it can call itself productive.

Of the three branches, the Army is the least productive because it still relies on the cannon fodder provided by compulsory conscription to bolster its ranks. It should learn from Taiwan who is cutting down conscription to less than 2 years and is considering replacing it with a fully-volunteer system like the US. If the Army moves in that direction, then I can see it is trying to be productive, i.e. maintaining its operational readiness by doing more with less CONSCRIPTS.

Majullah Singapura.