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SINGAPORE : Singapore military personnel will provide artillery training for Afghan officers from September. This will be carried out in a school to be set up either in the Afghan city of Kabul or Kandahar.
Defence Minister Teo Chee Hean revealed this ahead of SAF Day, which falls on Thursday. It is part of multi-national efforts to help the country's national security forces build up their capability.
This is the fourth year that SAF personnel are deployed in war-torn Afghanistan. They are currently in two provinces - Oruzgan and Bamiyan - providing support services like medical and surgical treatments.
A 21-man team is also manning a Weapon Locating Radar in Oruzgan province.
Explaining the deployments, Mr Teo said what happens in Afghanistan has a bearing on Singapore's security.
He said: "Our purpose in Afghanistan is to support the international efforts there, to try and bring stability to Afghanistan so that Afghanistan will not be a location from which terrorism is exported to other parts of the world, including to our region and to Singapore."
Following a review, Mr Teo said MINDEF will conclude deployments to Bamiyan this October.
Mr Teo added: "The kind of things we were doing in Bamiyan province - which is basically construction - is really being taken up by other groups coming into Bamiyan. So we've decided to pass this on to them, leave them to do this work."
But Singapore will deploy institutional trainers - starting with six to 10 people - to Afghanistan from September.
Mr Teo said: "We'll work together with our Australian friends, Australian Defence Force, to do training for artillery in a school which will be set up either in Kabul or Kandahar.
"We will help to set up the school, including things like training methodology, curriculum and so on, and we will train the artillery men for the Afghan National Security Forces - that means how to operate, how to use artillery guns, and the key principles involved in using artillery systems."
The SAF will also extend the deployment of the Weapon Locating Radar till the end of this year.
It will also deploy an unmanned aerial vehicle task group to Oruzgan for a three-month stint from August. The group will provide surveillance and security information to the security forces operating in the region.
On the SAF's ongoing transformation into a third generation fighting force, Mr Teo said it will continue to unfold in the next five to seven years.
He said: "Total number terms, we have come down. In capability terms, we have magnified the effect of each soldier. I expect that the developments of the 3rd generation SAF will continue to unfold over the next five to seven years.
"It's a big organisation, (with) many complex systems. Each of the systems themselves can take five to seven years to deliver, and then you got to fit all the parts together as they come in."
He also spoke about how having a capable SAF helps Singapore to shape the security environment in the region.
One such initiative is the Information Fusion Centre at the Changi Command and Control Centre, which brings together liaison officers from seven countries to work together on maritime issues.
Mr Teo said: "Because we can bring something to the table, we can contribute something to the security environment to facilitate interaction between different countries and armed forces, and to help to bring them together, so that the peaceful cooperative security environment that we want to see can develop."
He said Ministry of Defence will also leverage on new channels to engage the public.
One initiative is an 18-part mini-series which tracks a group of servicemen as they go through basic military training. The programme will be available on Youtube (www.youtube.com/cyberpioneertv) next week.
- CNA/al
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