Shipping all military equipment directly will cost Mindef ‘hundreds of millions’

SINGAPORE — Each year, the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) transports more than 700 military equipment using commercial carriers to all parts of the world in Asia, Australia, Europe and the United States.

And it would cost “three to four times more, and add several hundred million dollars” to the Ministry of Defence’s (Mindef) annual budget, to ship all military equipment directly from point-to-point, Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen told the House yesterday, in response to questions filed by Members of Parliament on the seizure and detainment of nine SAF armoured vehicles by Hong Kong customs.

Right now, the navy does not have transport ships with the scale and capability to ship all the equipment, Dr Ng noted. Its Endurance Class Landing Ships Tanks – the largest multi-purpose and transport ships – are due for replacement, and Mindef will consider if it needs to replace them with ships of larger capacity.

Dr Ng added that the SAF’s contracts with shipping companies and agents require them to comply with established protocols and all relevant international and local port rules. “Neither the SAF, Singapore, nor indeed most other countries operate on the assumption that our cargo will be arbitrarily seized when transiting reputable foreign ports. The SAF has followed these procedures for shipping military equipment for over 30 years without any significant incidents,” he said.

There are rare exceptions when the SAF does not use commercial shipping companies, or will apply special considerations if it does, based on security risk assessments. For example, for advanced weapon and sensor systems or submarines that were brought back by the SAF to Singapore. The special measures include chartering whole ships, mandating direct shipments, deploying protection forces or even converting the commercial ship into a government ship using the State Marine Ensign, Dr Ng said. The Terrexes — which were being transported from Taiwan to Singapore when they were seized on Nov 23 — did not fall into this special category, he added.

In response to Workers’ Party chief and Aljunied GRC MP Low Thia Khiang’s question on whether Mindef could have anticipated the seizure of the Terrexes, Dr Ng said that Hong Kong is “an international port with repute, and there is no reason to believe that our SAF assets would be seized”.

Mr Low also asked about the “loss of potential future earnings” for Singapore in the Terrex technology, which the United States has shown interest in. Dr Ng replied that this was “hard to assess” and it was something for ST Kinetics, the company which manufactured the vehicles, to look into. “Whether this increases the notoriety of the platform and therefore increases its selling potential or not, I mean who is to say but it’s theoretical and I want to defer from answering that question,” Dr Ng said.