Stealth Showdown: Could the F-35 Start a Deadly Arms Race in Asia?

Charlie Gao

Security, Asia

Singapore announced that it planned to buy a limited number of F-35 fighters for evaluation purposes. What happens next?    The author would like to thank Timothy Soh of Defense Politics Asia for assistance.    

On January 2019, Singapore announced that it planned to buy a limited number of F-35 fighters for evaluation purposes. While this didn’t come as a surprise to many Singaporean military watchers, the decision comes at a tense time for Singapore, with China becoming more assertive and rising tensions with Malaysia.

Could the F-35 purchase accelerate the arms race in the region? How might the F-35’s unique technical characteristics make it suitable for Singapore’s tactical environment?

In order to understand the effect that the F-35 will have on Singapore’s national defense, it is important to recognize that they are slated to replace Singapore’s advanced F-16 variants. Singapore operates around 60 F-16 Block 52s, which are underwent an upgrade program that gave them more advanced features such as AESA radars. Nevertheless, the Singapore defense ministry (MINDEF) expects that these aircraft will be obsolete by 2030.

In Singaporean service, the F-16 serves in a multirole capacity. However, the most recent upgrade appears to have prioritized its role as a strike aircraft rather than air-to-air combat. While some air-to-air missiles are included in the package, they are short range AIM-9X.

The majority of equipment purchased is meant for the strike mission, from laser guided kits for bombs to the AGM-65 Maverick air-to-ground missile. For a pure air-to-air mission, Singapore is likely to rely on it’s F-15SGs, which are optimized for the role with additional systems like infrared search and track (IRST).