Singapore Armed Forces Use regular soldiers as instructors
A friend wrote to express his support for using regulars as instructors for recruits. He said.

In basic military training, the instructors are the section leaders (sergeant rank), platoon commanders (lieutenant rank) and company commander (usually captain rank). A typical company has 4 platoons. Each platoon has 4 sections.

At present, we have in some cases all the section leaders and platoon commanders being full-time national serviceman (NSF). They are recent graduates from specialist cadet school (SCS) or officer cadet school (OCS). They lack operational experience and also lack the experience to manage new recruits.

Even in command schools like SCS and OCS, we have NSF as instructors.

It is better to have more experienced regular soldiers to be instructors.

Some officers said that there are not enough regulars to be deployed to BMT school.

This manpower shortage can be overcomed as follows:

a) We can rehire retired regulars as instructors in BMT. With their wealth of experience, they would make better instructors than NSF.

b) We can hire mid career Singaporeans as regular soldiers and train them to be instructors. They will have to be specialist or officers during their national service days. This will also lessen the current unemployment problem where many unemployed Professionals become private car hire drivers.

Tan Kin Lian
 

Add Comment

---