Austin Bay, posting at Instapundit, links to a Strategy Page story about city-state Singapore’s military preparedness, clearly punching above their weight.
The Singapore Navy has only 7,000 personnel and 36 ships but the sailors and officers are well trained and the ships, four subs and 30 surface warships, are modern and regularly updated or replaced.
Despite having a population that is mostly Chinese, one of the four official languages is English and nearly all residents speak it. More people speak English at home than Chinese. From the beginning Singapore sought to position itself as a multi-ethnic trading nation and not another Hong Kong or Taiwan.
Singapore spends about five percent of GDP on its armed forces, which consists of 72,000 active-duty personnel. Conscription (22-24 months of service) is used to enable Singapore to maintain a reserve force of over a million men with military training and able to be mobilized and armed in the event of a national emergency. Sort of like Switzerland but with a navy.
Island Singapore sits alongside the busiest waterway in the world - the Straits of Malacca. It is clear they wish to have a major say in the policing of their region.
The DrsC have sailed into and out of Singapore and seen the seaway there teeming with commercial vessels of all sorts and sizes, both moored and underway. Our impression from the sea was it looked like an enormous ‘truck stop’ on the maritime ‘interstate.’ Singapore’s navy - the Strait's ‘highway patrol’ - are heavily armed like a SWAT team.
