Page 136 - Australian Defence Magazine Sep-Oct 2022

136 LAND WARFARE REGIONAL ENGAGEMENT
SEPTEMBER 2022-OCTOBER 2022 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
SINGAPORE ARMED FORCES COMBINED ARMS TRAINING
One of the Singapore Armed Forces’ (SAF) key overseas training events is Exercise Wallaby held in the Shoalwater Bay Training Area (SWBTA) in Australia. This large-scale exercise takes place every year, and in addition to being an opportunity to train at battalion and even combined arms brigade level, also allows the Singaporean military to evaluate the readiness of its combat units.
MIKE YEO | MELBOURNE
WITH a population just shy of six million inhabitants the Southeast Asian city state is nevertheless economically well-off, due in a large part to its deep-water port sitting astride the maritime trade routes between East Asia and the Middle East/Europe.
Its strategic location, lack of strategic depth (due to its small size) and sometimes tense relationship with its larger immediate neighbours Indonesia and Malaysia has seen Singapore put a lot of emphasis on defence capability, and it is today one of the most (if not the most) capable militar- ies in Southeast Asia.
Its small size and highly urbanised landscape however mean Singapore’s armed forces are in desperately short supply of space to train in. This author remembers taking part in military training in training areas within sight of apartment towers and adjacent to busy freeways when he was a conscript around the turn of the century.
To offset this land shortage, Singapore started dra- matically expanding a program of training overseas in friendly countries in the 1990s, which until then most- ly involved its land forces training in Brunei, Taiwan and Thailand.
SINGAPORE MINISTRY OF DEFENCE