How is our Defense Spending Structured?

It is unfortunate that it took a calamity like MH370 to expose that Malaysia’s defense is fragile. How do we come to this conclusion? First as I have written in an earlier article, when our air force didn’t think it was prudent to scramble its air-crafts to intercept an intrusion by an unidentified plane into our airspace. The article elicited a comment from someone who quoted a military source saying that fighter planes do not intercept civilian air-crafts.

Civilian air crafts display some specific characteristics on the radar that can be interpreted as being not hostile while enemy fighter planes display unique characteristics that can be identified by radar. On  that reason, the radar operator will just look at the readings and ignore them.

So, going by this logic, our potential enemies, knowing that our air force people will read and assume this way, will send in drones and other lethal planes that display the characteristics of civilian and non-hostile aircrafts while carrying weaponry that can destroy us and our military will look the other way.

The other glaring revelation of our flimsy defense system is shown by our miserly response in terms of assets. What could we afford to send in for the SAR operations? Other than serving as coordinator for which were complimented on ( and that is seized  by UMNO supporters as indicative of our competency), we had nothing to show.

We made ourselves looked like a fool by employing the services of a VVIP Bomoh to the UMNO people and 1778 fishing boats class C and C2. Did we hear any of them traversing the Indian Ocean where the waves are mountain high? Do Malaysians know that out of the 6 navy ships including KD Kasturi which was just released after spending 5 years in the dock, 5 of these have come back? Why did they come back? To spare us Malaysians the embarrassment of having to put up with a search and rescue of the 5 ships that were sent out to do their own SAR of MH370 in the first place!

The sad truth is, despite spending billions of Ringgit in the purchase of weaponry, we do not have combat capable assets. And now the Defense Minister has come out with a brilliant plan to start a shopping spree for new and more capable assets. What happened to our spending in the past? We know that vendors and defense contractors are already salivating at the supply prospects.

My question is how is our defense spending structured? Is it structured to enrich a few UMNO cronies or is it structured to strengthen our defense?

Posted by sakmongkol AK47