FORT SILL, Oklahoma, Nov 17 — The mother of all war games will play out today in a rugged patch of bush in mid-western United States.
Five years of experiments in high-tech warfare by the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) will come together in the exercise, in which the latest sensors, weapons and digitised warfare tactics will be tested in the live-firing drill.
Exercise Forging Sabre, as this dry run for a modernised or Third Generation SAF has been called, will involve more than 370 soldiers and airmen.
Also in play: four F-16 fighter jets, six Apache attack helicopters, two Chinook heavy-lift helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles from Republic of Singapore Air Force detachments in Texas and Arizona, as well as commando ground forces, among other air and land assets.
Men and machines have been out in the bush over the last three weeks or so, honing their search-and-strike skills in the run-up to the live firing, to be witnessed by Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Teo Chee Hean.
Brigadier-General Tan Chuan-Jin, the director of Exercise Forging Sabre, describing the exercise as the “most complex to date”, said: “This is not just a technical live firing. It is as realistic as we can get, as we are replicating an actual three-dimensional battle space within which multiple things happen at the same time.”
Combat leaders and ground troops will have to think on their feet, even as they are fed battle data, and then act, said Tan, who is also the commander of the Army Training and Doctrine Command.
The 30km by 10km expanse of the ‘battlefield’, about two-thirds the size of Singapore, adds to the realism of the exercise: The troops can hit targets at far greater distances than is possible back home.
Brigadier-General Richard Pereira, the air director of the exercise, said: “The more realistic environment allows our shooters to bring their firepower and weapons to bear.”
This is the first time that the air force’s F-16 fighter pilots will drop live 900kg, laser-guided bombs in air-to-ground manoeuvres. Tan said the exercise on American soil was made possible following a year of talks between Singapore and the US.
It is the first time the US military has gazetted an area within Fort Sill, a US Army base that trains field artillery soldiers and marines, for an exercise of this nature.
For Captain Foo Tng Loong, 29, who will fly in from a Texas airbase to take part in the drill, it is the culmination of the last three months’ training on “dropping the ‘goods’ on the ‘enemy’”.
“From 10,000 feet to 20,000 feet, the target looks like a dot, but the information provided by the commandos and ground troops on the ground ensures we make the kill,” he said. — The Straits Times
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