Thursday, June 23, 2011

Airspace intrusion: Views from both sides of the Causeway

Please take part in the latest poll on the airspace intrusion stories presented here. Thank you.

Malaysia's point of view

Singapore's point of view

9 comments:

GaGaK said...

zahid probably meant the UAV... been living in JB quite some time... the UAV sounds like high pitch buzzing bee.. only louder.

David Boey said...

Hi GGK,
How far inland in JB?

RSAF 128 Squadron had some loss of control issues with the Scout RPVs (now retired) years ago and they should have solved these issues by now with the present classes of UAVs.

In any case, I believe MINDEF Singapore would be open enough to include UAVs in their assessment of KEMENTAH's response to Dewan Rakyat.

How do Malaysian defence enthusiasts feel about Col Desmond Tan's response?

Best Regards,

David

Spotter@Milnuts said...

Hopefully this round of accusations is a result of the forthcoming ERECTION....oops I mean elections and not something bigger.. (pun intended). It's been a while since they played this game - used to be a regular event to whip up nationalistic sentiments.

F said...

Suggestions that the question was raised to ''whip up nationalistic sentiments'' or for other internal reasons, doesn't hold much weight as there are lots of other issues that can be raised. The elections may be near but the plain fact is that the average Malaysian is simply not concerned about Singapore. What concerns the majority of voters are issues such as rising food/oil prices, education, transparency, etc, not national security and certainly not Singapore. The issue of airspace violations did not even get reach the front page or even the 2nd page of all the major dailies. No politican from either side of the political spectrum made any fuss over the issue or made any moves to gain political milage.

Given it's vast operational responsibilities, due to the size of the country, the MAF, which is already underfunded and overstretched, is in no position to pose a there to anyone.To give an example, the state of Sabah which is about 7-8 times the land mass of Singapore if not more, is under the responsibility of a single Brigade HQ, with only light infantry battalions..... Though the MAF, like most armed forces, has plans to ''take the fight to the enemy'' if needed, it simply does not have the capability to do so. Bear in mind that unlike the SAF, the MAF has only got into the external security game recently - for several decades, it main focus was counter insurgency. And this is still reflected in the way the army is organised.

F said...

P.S. Sorry, I meant a 'threat' to anyone, not 'there'.

Fariz.

Anonymous said...

No option for 'neither' in the poll?

David Boey said...

re: A "neither" option for the poll.

This was considered but as viewpoints from Malaysia and Singapore are definitive yet diametrically opposed, the poll is meant to suss out where netizens stand on this matter.

If neither is to be believed, then is the truth somewhere in between or is one country telling an untruth to a greater degree than the other? In the latter case, another response matrix would be called for, kind of like a subset of "neither".

GaGaK said...

not far... gelang patah area.

Anonymous said...

I find it hard to believe that either Singapore or Malaysia's account is completely true.

It could be a matter of definitions (e.g., what count as (1) an aircraft from (2) Singapore and (3) an intrusion). An issue of definitions and semantics is not trivial.

Would be great to hear more accounts (without compromising OPSEC, of course) about how contentious or tricky the real issues are.

Eric