Recently, during Parliamentary discussions in Singapore, the Minister for Defence, Mr Ng Eng Hen, revealed that the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) is in the Final Stages in its evaluation of the F-35 Lightning II.
The F-35 program has seen numerous setbacks due to operational hiccups, budget overruns and mostly the ballooning requirements for the aircraft. Primary customers outside of the United States are increasingly growing impatient with the projected delivery of the fighter and are looking to other sources to update their respective fleets. The cost overruns have also caused some countries to revise the projected procurement numbers downwards.
The result of Singapore's evaluation of the craft will be watched closely by many military procurement analysts around the world, as Singapore Armed Forces is widely known as a very prudent buyer of military technologies. Singapore's evaluation will therefore be held in high-regard.
How Singapore moves forward with this may have a significant impact on the general outlook of the F-35 program and could potentially make or break the market outside that of the existing Joint Strike Fighter program partners.
Minister Ng also mentioned that, "The F-35 will be the vanguard of next-generation fighter aircraft in operation."
This statement is interesting, to say the least, as it means that the RSAF will either retain existing fighters or procure other fighters to make up the RSAF's new fighter ORBAT. The vanguard is usually a portion of the military formation that leads the attack and softens the enemy for the rest of the forces to come in more easily.
"[Singapore's MINDEF] will have to be satisfies that this state-of-the-art multi-role fighter meets our long-term needs, is on track to be operationally capable and, most importantly, is a cost-effective platform. I've given many necessary caveats before we make a final decision, but we are evaluating the platform."
The RSAF has always used a mixture of platforms in its inventory, but this might mean that Singapore might only procure enough to meet this need and use non-fifth gen. aircraft to make up the rest of the fleet. Possibly significantly smaller than the earlier estimate of 100 F-35 that Singapore might procure.
Alternatives to the F-35 that Singapore could consider or to partially make up its new fighter fleet, could be the F-15SG of which the RSAF operates 24, or the F-15 Silent Eagle, a variant of the F-15 with better stealth features.
Edit : As of May 13 2013, although there has been quite a bit of speculation as to the decision the Singapore Armed Forces has made with regards to the Procurement of the F-35, there has been no official announcement nor any news credible enough to indicate the decision that has been made, if any.
