AFP, SINGAPORE: Singapore's army plans to replace its ageing light tanks with a new armoured fighting vehicle which may be equipped with precision-guided missiles, a top officer said in remarks published here Wednesday.
Brigadier General Bernard Tan, chief armour officer, said it would take three to five years to develop test versions of the new armoured vehicle as part of a plan to produce a “third-generation (3G)” army.
“It is going to be packed with greater firepower, not necessarily direct fire weapons but certainly the ability to call on precision fire, to be entirely wired up, highly mobile,” the Straits Times quoted Tan as saying.
Singapore, a small but affluent city-state, has the most modern naval, air and land forces in Southeast Asia and relies heavily on technology to beef up its military strength.
But one of its mainstays is the 18-tonne SM1 light tank, an upgrade of the AMX-13 first made in France in the 1940s, the report said.
In addition to the terrorist threat in recent years, Singapore considers itself vulnerable to regional instability and spends a vast amount on keeping its regular military and reservists fully trained.
