I wrote this reflection in 2020 to share with my CSS community. At that time, never would I have predicted the circumstances we were in as a result of COVID-19. We went through two months of “Circuit Breaker”, completed Phase 1 and started on Phase 2 of our operations in support of the WoG, and looking forward to Phase 3 — a semi-return to normalcy. We were in the midst of an economic downturn, borders were tightening globally, and we were forced to change our way of life. Nationally, even the General Election and NDP that we were used to had to change. No one could have anticipated the speed, scale and impact COVID-19 had on training, operations and overseas exercises in the SAF, and in particular what our Army was used to.

The resurgence of COVID-19 cases in August 2021 has triggered the Nation to shift back into P2HA, with tighter control measures imposed on our way of life and an increased demand for aggressive testing, vaccination, care facilities and systems. The national healthcare system was once again under pressure, and the SAF was called upon to respond to the crisis. COVID-19 has thus far been one of the most disruptive event in recent memory.

Our fight against COVID-19 started in end-January 2020 when CSSTF was tasked to pack and deliver 5.5 million surgical masks within 48 hours for distribution to all Singaporean households through 89 Community Centres/ Residents' Committees. For the next six months, 10 CSSTFs were formed to support SAF COUs, MOH, MOM, Ministry of Trade & Industry (MTI), Enterprise Singapore Group (ESG), NTUC Enterprise and other WoG agencies. COVID-19 illuminated the need for CSSCOM to be Better, Smarter, Faster in support of the Army and the SAF as we build towards a CSSCOM that is Mission-focused, Data-driven and Respected.

A BETTER CSSCOM

Putting People First

The key success factor for CSSCOM is our people. The successful execution of our mission by CSSians builds trust and respect from our community. Our people possess strong values, teamwork and work humbly behind the scenes to accomplish the mission. They do the right things and always do things right. We coin these attributes as our CSS DNA, and we continue to nurture them today through the way we organise, train and care of our people.

CSSCOM is type-organised in peace and task-organised in operations. This is our strength as we are able to build deep domain expertise in peace while being agile in operations. In short, what we do in peace = operations = war. In response to COVID-19, we empowered integrated CSSTFs, configured based on mission context and forward deployed them to lead, plan and execute end-to-end CSS operations. These task forces (TFs) collaborated with our integrated operations centre (which we called CSSONE) as well as the defence industry and technology eco-system. We were able to surge for operations seamlessly and responsively because of our partnership with our larger CSS eco-system.

Our CSS leaders are trained in peace for their roles in crisis, operations and war. Our response to COVID-19 today is evidence-based, calibrated and well-informed. This was not the case in 2020, when the world was just learning about the virus and the uncertainties that came with it. Our leaders, our organisation and our engagement with stakeholders had to adapt quickly to the evolving situation in real time – this skillset does not come easily. Leadership training through leading Forward Support Groups (FSG) for overseas exercises and Task Forces in support of national and international events are critical enabler to deliver agile and adaptive CSS leaders who embrace leading multi-disciplinary team and thrive in operating in multi-stakeholder environments. Putting people first means we must train them well for any mission that come their way.

We also set up Care Task Force to take care of the physical and emotional needs of our soldiers and their families. My Defence Psychologist and his team also conducted surveys to understand our soldiers' morale and pain points so that we could adapt along the way. My Safety Team enforced safety, compliance on the ground, and protected our soldiers' well-being.

Furthermore, I challenged Maintenance and Engineering Support (MES) to develop ops-tech solutions to protect our people operating at the frontline so that the operational risks were mitigated as much as possible. I focused this TF on developing meaningful, productive and responsive solutions for dormitory operations, where risks of transmission were highest then. For our people to focus on the mission, we must care for them, support them and look after their families.

Resilience is a Necessity

COVID-19 delivered a massive shock to the global and national supply chain system. Our instinct to plan for the worst case, such as stockpiling, diversification, scenario planning and exercises, and a seamless peace-to-ops system allowed CSSCOM to respond well to COVID-19. The SAF was able to conduct operations and training with minimum disruption while continuing to house and sustain our SAF COUs across camps to maintain a high level of operational readiness. We also supported the WoG and WoN fight against COVID-19 in the area of sourcing and equipping, contact tracing, dormitory management, emergency housing, medical care and ops-tech solutions.

Going forward, we need to continue to build resilience into our critical resources (e.g. a need for Smart Supply Chain Intelligence), our workforce (including contractors and sub-contractors), our systems and processes (e.g. rapid procurement) and overall, a strong peace-to-war ecosystem. CSSCOM alone cannot support the nation – we must partner with the larger WoG and industry ecosystem to do so. Two such examples: LTC (NS) Gabriel Tang led a team into GovTech to support the supply chain planning, development, equipping and Operations & Support of TraceTogether and SafeEntry Gateway, which equipped the nation with the means for effective contact tracing; SLTC (RET) Lim Soon Meng also led a team to partner with MTI and develop contingency plans for global supply chain disruptions. The team jointly executed one of the plans that ensured the continuous flow of essential supplies and food into Singapore at the time. These partnerships are essential for us to scale up for operations rapidly and sustain our capabilities during a prolonged crisis.

Our people must be ready to take ownership, fight red tapes, exercise discipline and work together with our partners from peace to war. CSSCOM must also deliberately invest and build our defence ecosystem to support us in peace, in emergencies, in tension and in war. We must never leave this to market forces that will tear, divide and compromise our capability, resilience and sustainment.