Ministry of Defense Review of National Service
The recent death of Aloysius Pang that occurred during reservist training in New Zealand has prompted the Singapore Armed Forces to review the training pace across all services. Click here.

I suggest that the government should review the entire National Service approach. 

Currently, male citizens are called up by law for two years of full time military training followed by ten years of reservist training.

Some citizens have called for National Service to be abolished and for us to rely on a full time professional army.

We do not need to this extreme position of abolishing National Service. There are benefits of having our men trained on military skills and discipline. It also help to build their character.

But the full time military training can be shortened. In Switzerland, the basic military training is for 21 weeks (5 months). This is following by 6 periods of following up training of 19 days. The total obligation is 260 days or 8 months. Click here.

In Taiwan, the basic military training for male citizens have been reduced to four months. Previously, it was 12 months. Click here.

As a first step, we should reduce our full time national service to 12 months (instead of 24 months). Looking at the experience of other countries, this duration should be more than adequate. 

We can also reduce our reservist duty to 3 years (from the current 10 years). This will allow us to have an operationally ready reservist force of 60,000 people to back up the professional army and the full time NS men.

After three years, we do not need to call up the reservists for regular training, except during hostility (which has not occurred during the past six decades).

A shorter call up period for reservist training will cause least disruption to th careers of our male citizens. Employers will be more willing to employ male citizens after they have completed the reservist obligation.

We should also pay an adequate allowance for full time NS men. The allowance should match what the average young person can earn as a full time worker.  They should not be financially worse off due to the national service obligation.

Some people objected to my proposal of one year for full time service, as it is not adequate to train officers. I agree. I prefer all the officer to be full time soldiers. It is too costly and wasteful to train NS men to be officers. 

I believe that the new approach will be more cost effective. We can reduce the cost of training our NS men during the full time and reservist years by more than 50%. We can probably save $1 billion or more on our defense budget.

We will maintain a smaller operationally ready force, but it should be adequate for our defense needs. Our male citizens will not have to make such a big sacrifice of their time and suffer a big disadvantage in their civilian careers. 

I hope that the government will consider this approach.

Tan Kin Lian

 


 

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