Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen said in Parliament today that the Singapore Armed Forces will be deploying a team of planners to support the multinational coalition in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)
He explained that the planners will support others who were deployed since November last year. The planners will help coordinate SAF and Coalition forces.
The planners will go to the Combined Joint Task Force Headquarters and the Combined Air Ops Centre. A separate site-survey team will also be deployed to prepare for the deployment of its KC-135 tanker.
Currently, Dr Ng said that it is still too early to determine whether there would be more requests for help from Singapore.
Dr Ng also acknowledged the risks involved in joining the coalition forced admitting that it is impossible to completely prevent an attack back home.
This is a problem which has happened in many countries including Australia, UK, France and more where terrorists who support the Islamic State have acted in retaliation at their countries joining the coalition to destroy the Islamic State by carrying out attacks in these countries.
In Singapore, there have been a handful of citizens who have gone to the middle east to join the armed conflict and DPM Teo acknowledge that this is a security threat as those who go overseas and join armed conflict may bring their knowledge back to Singapore and resort to violence.
"We must continue to use this time not only to increase our vigilance... But also to ask our community to come together and withstand such false ideologies and stand together if ever such an attack occurs," said Dr Ng.