DR NG VISITS NEW SAF TRAINING AREA IN AUSTRALIA

"It (The Townsville Field Training Area or TFTA) is a very rare piece of training ground with enough size and distances for our armoured vehicles, for our mechanised and motorised brigades. And this is now available to us because of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), and it shows how significant the MOU that was signed is."

Minister for Defence Dr Ng Eng Hen said this after a helicopter tour of the TFTA on 14 Oct, where he was accompanied by Australian Minister for Defence Personnel Dan Tehan. He was visiting Townsville together with Australian Defence Minister Marise Payne. The two had just signed the MOU on Military Training and Training Area Development a day earlier in Canberra.

Dr Ng elaborated: "What we saw was actually about four times the size of Singapore. And they (the Australians) are also in the process of acquiring another piece of training ground and joining this so that the total will be five times the size of Singapore.

"It's very suitable for combined arms, which means that you can use it for tanks, you can use it for Artillery, you can use it for Armoured Infantry, you can use it for the Guards, Special Forces, as well as Joint, which means that you can use it for helicopter strikes, (and) for strikes from fighter aircraft."

Dr Ng noted that the latest defence agreement was a "very historic Memorandum of Understanding that will pave the way for very strong relations between Australia and Singapore, and between us Singaporeans and the people of Townsville".

Ms Payne shared similar views on the strength of the Singapore-Australia bilateral defence relationship. She said: "It's not often in 2016, that you find yourself making a 25-year agreement. It's a really strong foundation for the development of the training area, (and) for the development of training activities for the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF)."

Dr Ng, Ms Payne and Mr Tehan had engaged Townsville leaders as well as public and private sector leaders earlier that morning. Dr Ng said the Townsville community was very warm and accommodating and that they looked forward to the SAF's training in the TFTA.

At the same time, he reminded SAF soldiers that as guests, "we want to make sure that we treasure their land, treasure their people, and form good relationships".

The Military Training and Training Area Development MOU was one of the initiatives to strengthen defence cooperation under the Singapore-Australia Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP).

With this MOU, the SAF will be able to conduct unilateral training in Australia for 18 weeks with 14,000 troops per year over 25 years, in a total training area amounting to 10 times the size of Singapore.

Singapore and Australia will also jointly develop the TFTA and Shoalwater Bay Training Area. This is to meet the SAF's growing requirements for motorised and armoured live-firing training, as well as combined arms and joint training.

Under the umbrella of the CSP, which was signed by the two countries last June, MINDEF and the Australian Department of Defence (ADoD) had also earlier concluded other MOUs. These included the MOU on Sharing of Military Intelligence Assessments and the MOU on Personnel Exchanges which were signed in September 2016 and October 2016 respectively, and the Defence Science and Technology MOU signed in July 2015.

Both MINDEF and the ADoD have also committed to holding a pilot Track 1.5 security dialogue and developing Exercise Trident into the signature bilateral joint military exercise.

In Dr Ng's earlier trip to Canberra from 11 to 13 Oct, he was part of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's delegation there together with Minister for Trade and Industry (Trade) Lim Hng Kiang and Minister for Foreign Affairs Dr Vivian Balakrishnan.