Warning siren on 1 Feb, e-service disruptions to be held as part of Total Defence exercise

If you hear the wailing blast of a siren in the afternoon on 1 Feb, don’t be alarmed.

That’s the Singapore Civil Defence Force’s (SCDF’s) “Important Message” signal being sounded on the Public Warning System (PWS).

For the first time, the PWS siren will sound at 3pm on 1 Feb – instead of the usual date on 15 Feb – to mark the start of this year’s Exercise SG Ready.

What’s Exercise SG Ready?

A Total Defence (TD) initiative that began in 2024, the annual exercise will be returning in 2026 to encourage Singaporeans to plan for disruptions, be prepared to respond, and play their part in keeping Singapore strong.

This year’s edition, which runs from 1 to 15 Feb, will focus on enhancing Singaporeans’ readiness for degraded digital connectively and prolonged power outages.

More than 1,000 organisations across the educational, community, businesses and government sectors will take part in various disruption or preparedness activities during the two-week exercise period.

Citing examples such as the Cloudflare outage which crippled global Internet usage in December 2025, Brigadier General (BG) Frederic Choo, MINDEF’s Deputy Secretary (Policy), noted: “Events from the around the world remind us that disruptions are possible and can happen here in Singapore.”

He was speaking at a media interview on 15 Jan.

“We hope Exercise SG Ready will enhance our society’s readiness for prolonged power outage and disruption to digital connectivity. We call on all Singaporeans to participate in this exercise, look out for one another in the community, and stand united as a society during crises.”

What’s new in this year’s exercise?

The sounding of the “Important Message” signal on the PWS at 3pm on 1 Feb will be followed by the first nation-wide broadcast of the TD message by Coordinating Minister for National Security and Minister for Home Affairs K Shanmugam on all local radio stations and free-to-air TV channels.

There will also be pilot testing of a broadcast alert message pop-up on the ERP2.0 On-Board Units (OBU) for cars.

The broadcast alert message will announce that the PWS signal has been sounded as part of Exercise SG Ready 2026, and encourage members of the public to tune in to any local radio station to listen to the TD message.

To simulate the disruption of digital connectivity, several non-emergency apps – including the OneNS and SAFRA app – will be put on maintenance mode for one hour on 1 Feb at 3pm.

Participating organisations will carry messages to remind users of the need to be ready for such disruptions, with a link to the Ministry of Digital Development and Information and Infocomm Media Development Authority’s “What to Do in a Digital Connectivity Disruption” guide.

During the downtime, the organisations will also take the opportunity to strengthen their business continuity plans for such situations.

What activities can I take part in?

As part of the Exercise SG Ready activities, members of public can sign up for the SAFRA Total Defence Carnival on 31 Jan and 1 Feb, which will be held at various SAFRA clubhouses.

Some of highlights of the carnival include a fire drill exercise that features power disruption, as well as an emergency preparedness activity that involves the packing of an emergency ready bag.

Visit the SGReadyGoWhere website at https://go.gov.sg/exercisesgready for details on the locations and dates of the various exercise activities, as well as online resources for preparedness activities.