The above video is a massive dog and pony show, but it does beg the question.
Is Singapore, pound for pound, the most powerful in the Pacific?
I think a good argument can be made that they are! They have world class law enforcement (to include border controls that are spooky good...you will not over stay a visa in that country!), ultra modern military equipment with the best kit bought globally or produced locally AND they have national service which doesn't appear to have had a negative affect on their professionalism.
Consider this.
It can be argued that they operate the most heavily protected, most modern tank in the region. Their fleet of F-16's and F-15E's are likewise of the most modern versions available. They have a modern fleet, and their Special Ops troops train hard and regularly.
The Japanese, Australians and S. Koreans are good.
The Singaporeans might be better.
Singapore has been stocking up on arms for a while. I think it was 2012 or 2013, that they were the world's 7th largest importer of arms.
ReplyDeleteIt's a nice video.
ReplyDeleteAt 3:50 is that battlefield theme song on this?
It is the theme song from Battlefield 4. And there are more from Commando, Transformers and another Schwaznegar movie I cannot recall.
DeletePound for Pound, even the UK forces are kickass.
ReplyDeletethe British forces are a shadow of their former greatness. i expect Poland to eclipse them rather soon.
DeletePoland have 0 projection power, an extremely small baltic-only Navy and the Air Force use a mix of F16 C/D, Mig 29 and...SU-22M and is quite small compared to the RAF.
DeleteThe army si rapidly modernising, not expanding. They have more tanks and that's all, and some of them are Leos that need upgrading. They are a defensive force to protect the country.
In overall numbers+quality maybe the Germans. In quality and above all experience and projection power without any doubts the British and the French, with the Brits having a small edge in some areas. They also have top notch Air Forces (for an european power) and Navies. Special Forces have seen a lot of action lately and are useful in operations against the usual third world shitholes.
And of course, they are nuclear powers.
i said i "foresee" them eclipsing the Brits. who exactly has led the charge against Russian actions on the continent? the freaking Poles. the French are whoring themselves and the Brits have been silent.
Deleteadditionally they're in the process of bankrupting themselves in order to maintain pace with the US....instead of being able to provide needed functions to aid other European allies...or the US.
perfect example? power projection! the carrier is only duplicating a US capability not a British or European need. they should have built a smaller but more capable LHA that could do multiple missions instead of doing a USA on the cheap! want to talk european defense? they've killed their tank forces! have developed units based on MRAPS????? and are still trying to figure out what they're going to do with the ASCOD and Warriror vehicles!
Poland is going to be the major force on the mainland within a decade. maybe two. bet on it.
If Poland is a sign of things to come for Euro Defence then even Turkey should feature prominantly.
DeleteSorry but I maybe miss a episode, did Poland do something more than talks about Russia's activities, as anybody else of course ?
DeleteThey were already upgrading their army before that and they only want to protect their country, not act as the Eastern Europe policeman.
One or two decades is a lot of time. Maybe ther Polish army could be built-up in numbers and quality to be the biggest in Europe, but certainly not the best equipped or the better trainer, they have a conscription army and their economy is on Spain's level.
Britain and France don't need as many tanks as someone wich have a border (Kaliningrad) with Russia and with Russia's client state (Bielorrusia). There still are some Chally 2 and Leclerc tank bataillons to be sent to the baltic countries if needed and they are better thant anything Russia have.
In 10-20 years they would still have the best Navies and Air Forces in Europe and the best military-industrial complex to have quality materiel. They are already working on a common combat drone.
Totally agree with the new brits carriers, they are overkill and not well thought for their needs. And of course the F-35 could be a killer for them. As for the ASCOD yeah but it's the classical ''gold-plated'' and ''we don't know what we want'' problem of military procurement in the Western World.
Overall is good to see Poland modernize her army from a European point-of-view, and let's hope that other countries of the area, like Sweden are taking notes, the defense of the whole continent cannot be only based on a very few western Europe countries.
Lad's ask the local dude about state of Armed Forces. :D
Deletebalrog2005@ In points for the clarity of discussion.
- Did Poland done more then talks? Aye a lot more, aggression in Georgia was an wake up call for even the most die hard military group in Polish Armed Forces, after generations of fighting with Russians we acquire some unique perk... we fell in the guts when Bear is going in to rampage. So the modernization program speed up as hell, from the low level equipment like helmets and vests in to highly complicated communications system. I don't know if you have that information but there was serious possibility to cut down GDP spending even more, but it was frozen and... well we wait. After the Crime the military speeding will go steady up.
Indeed Poland don't build own army for invasion. Mainly as defense force but with limited ability to force projection or long range operation with our allies.
The numbers? The whole Armed Forces count 100.000 soldiers... full, professional soldiers. And the conscription army? Poland for long time don't have a conscription army but full professional one.
The level of modernization is outstanding in every aspect. Navy, Air Force, Army... the Polish Army is one of small group of forces that create own Future Soldier program that is in highly advance level and first packs will be tested THIS YEAR! in infantry units.
It's not that bad as you can think, it's pretty good.
But there is an... bad thing. There are rumors, pretty scary rumors in Air Force, rumors that make my stomach hurt. As finally some people with oil in head start to openly speak that buying of F-16 was a great mistake, there are rumors about buying more of them... or, and I don't joking... F-35.
BTW: the Navy, Poland don't need large Navy because it only operate on Baltic. That's a small, shallow sea. But now there is huge rebuilding program with a lot's of new ships and what is more important new subs with launching maneuver missiles capability. As land missile battery will be added a second unit of missile launchers with ability to hit ground target's as well.
well as the NeoCons used to say all the time, the future of Europe (at least militarily) rests with the recently freed former Soviet Bloc nations. Poland is getting its act together, i haven't talked about them in awhile but Romania for all its troubles is putting together a decent force and they're hard soldiers....Moldova and Estonia are all seeing the light and we don't even have to talk about Georgia that is constantly training with whatever USMC or Army unit that they can get ahold of!.
DeleteIf you want Sol' I can send you article from presentation of final product in RAWAT program of new assault rifle for Polish Armed Forces, the MSBS-5,56 and the MSBS-5,56B. It's tested and ready for full production, just waiting for Gov. approval.
DeleteIf the Singaporeans can become a well functioning part of a broader alliance then their forces are a healthy booster dose. If they act independantly, which they wont.....then they might just get bypassed like anyone of those mighty Maginot Line Fortifications. Also, do note that most Singaporeans are of a Han Chinese lineage with a pro-business/pro-diplomacy mindset. They might not see China with the same anger as some other countries see.
ReplyDeletepersonally i think Singaporean foreign policy is practical in the extreme. why should they make alliances that force them to choose sides in a super power struggle between the US and China? thats insanity for a small technologically advanced country like that. much like Swiss neutrality its better to cooperate where possible, to avoid confrontation and have strong enough defense to deter enemy aggression.
DeleteTotally agree. And this is where that advanced military comes into being. It is an amazing bargaining chip in those foreign policy matters.
DeleteWe've seen many exapmples of small countries maintaining capable militaries. But thats usually with some big power subsidizing them in many cases. I wonder if the Singaporeans are getting any subsidy.
ReplyDeleteOff topic, but anyway, seeing europe's future (wether militarily or economically) as resting with new eastern european EU or NATO members is seriously misguided. The major concern for countries in the East, as has been pointed out by some posters, is being secure from their Russian nemesis. Most of their military buildup is of defensive nature. Now that certainly is a progress in terms of burden sharing regarding NATO's and Europe's capabilities vs Russia or Russian proxies that might be tempted to try stirring up shit in the area.
ReplyDeleteHowever regarding power projection, professionalism, and overall size (which also matters when you got to rotate forces), they will never be an alternative to UK, French and Germans (+maybe Italians, Spaniards and Dutch) getting their act together.
Poland might be the only exception to that rule, but their main concern is being able to build up a credible armoured land force against the Russian bear.
As for a more unified European Defense pillar, nobody really wants it. Every nation has its own agenda, which results in overall paralysis when it comes to global threats.
State of play in UK forces is quite worrying. The French are sort of doing the US' bidding against Al Qeada type forces in Africa, while at the same time trying to befriend terrorism sponsors like Qatar ... Talk about schizophrenia. The Germans on the other hand are behaving like a large size Switzerland, hiding behind their constitution in order to get involved in the least possible way, and they're also desperately lacking the professionalism and experience for any large size deployment (especially if they have to go at it alone).
Add to that the fact that every European nation lacks real capabilities in terms of transport aircraft and you get a pretty dire picture of the situation.
Ad to this the business relations and Germany trying to play on both side, be still a friend of Russia and act like solid partner in NATO. With France they start to look like the appeasement politics is again on the table. But sooner or later they will understand (or not) that you can't eat cake and have cake. Or they are with Europe or they are with Russia... look's like the Vlad had done what he said many times, create again bipolar world.
DeleteSingapore defence is taxpayer funded. Mainy because the citizens shoulder more of healthcare and retirement savings themselves. Which will never work in western countries
ReplyDeleteI don't really get your point ? Are you suggesting defence in western countries is not taxpayer funded ?
DeleteI mean, we spend more as a percentage of GDP on defence as compared to healthcare and welfare. Which most Western countries are not spending right now.
DeleteSingapore spends 3.3% of GDP on military, hardly a large number, 2-5% is what is commonly accepted as reasonable by all but the most left wing of human society, with 2% being the minimum required to be a member of NATO. They have over 70F16s, about 25 F15s and numerous older planes (probably used for ground attack), they have 6 air defence frigates and 6 Submarines. Plus what is without a doubt the most powerful military in South East Asia and Oceania.
DeleteAnd singapore is hardly a country where wages for the soldiers are low or anything like that, so no one can use that ridiculous excuse. They are an example of prudent military expenditure, like Sweeden had for a long time been, and still sort of is.
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?order=wbapi_data_value_2013+wbapi_data_value+wbapi_data_value-last&sort=desc
An interesting activity to do is compare smaller countries like scananvian ones, singapore, taiwan, finland and even to a degree south korea that have high wage rates as well as cost effective militaries, with much larger western countries like Australia or Poland etc..etc.. Especially when considering that many of these countries produce, design and export much of their military equipment.
ReplyDeleteSingapore for instance maintains an air force of about 100 modern frontline fighters of which about a Quarter are of the high-end dual engine configuration, a navy with a combat element of 6 Modern Anti-Air Frigates and 6 Submarines, and an Army consisting of 200 Leopard2 SG tanks, 900 Fairly Modern IFVs, 1000 M113s, 500Artillery units of various types including 18HIMARS and 50 Self-propelled guns and 400 Strike vehicles. By all right using simple maths, and assuming all other factors remain constant (with similar wage rates) a country like Australia should have a force 5x of that, it doesn't even come close to having half of that in terms of capabilities despite spending about 3x their budget on defence. And signapore isn't an exception look at what sort of force Sweeden maintains, and what they used to maintain.
But that is oversimplifying things, australia doesn't have any land boders, it's focus should mainly revolve arround maritime security and controlling strategic waterways and trade lanes, as well as intridicting any inbound forces, which would mean devoting a proportionately larger share of military resources towards the navy and airforce, in a manner similar to England, which due to the Requirement of France to maintain a powerfull army to fight against Burgandy and Castille, later Spain and the HRE/Austria/prussia allowed england, a country far smaller in terms of land, people and economy to defeat France in every major war. Australia is a very good case-study in this case, as China would be the France.