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Singapore’s low-profile military industrial complex recently returned to winning form with the securing of an agreement with Kazakhstan for a joint venture deal in designing and building a new 8x8 amphibious infantry carrier vehicle based off Singapore’s indigenous Terrex design. This marks a small but significant step change in Kazakh defense procurement, away from its traditional reliance on Russia, further eroding its political and military influence in the largest of the former Soviet “Stan” Central Asian states.
The choice of Singapore as its latest arms dealer is of potential interest due to the demonstration of Astana’s balancing of a desire to diversify and modernize its military along western lines, against the potential of angering Moscow by seeking out NATO member states such as France and Spain which have historically sold arms to Kazakhstan in small quantities. According to a paper published in August by the Caspian Policy Center, long delays in Russian fulfillment of legacy arms deals have been responsible for a precipitous drop in Russia’s market share of Kazakh arms imports, from 94 percent as recently as 2019 to 48 percent in 2023. The prospects of Kazakhstan and Russia agreeing to new arms sales are further dimmed by Astana’s refusal to recognize Russia’s annexation of Eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk territories, supposedly legitimized by Russian-sponsored referendums held in September 2022.
The main beneficiaries of Russia’s fading arms export presence in Kazakhstan have been Spain and South Africa, the latter having set up a joint venture in June 2014 called “Kazakhstan Paramount Engineering” KPE specializes in designing and producing wheeled armored vehicles, hence its latest collaboration with Singapore’s ST Engineering in adapting the Terrex design for Kazakh domestic production and service.
This would make Kazakhstan the third country in the world to build and operate the Terrex, the second being Ghana through an arms sales agreement with Israel in 2020. There have been previous attempts by Singapore to export the design, such as to the Australian Army under its LAND 400 Mounted Combat Reconnaissance Capability (MCRC) procurement program and the US Marine Corps’ Amphibious Combat Vehicle program, all between 2011 and 2018.
The export success of the Terrex marks the third significant example of Singapore’s history in selling large military assets on the international arms market. As befitting Singapore’s geographical nature as a maritime island state, its first big-ticket sale was a naval amphibious landing ship to the Royal Thai Navy in November 2008 as Thailand sought to build up its humanitarian and disaster relief capabilities after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which claimed more than 5,000 lives on the country’s coast and islands and at least 225,000 worldwide. Launched in March 2011 and commissioned into active service just over a year later, HTMS Angthong was based off the Endurance-class ship design which remains Singapore’s largest domestically constructed warship.
In December 2008 ST Engineering (known then as ST Kinetics) secured a S$330 million (US$222.3 million) land-systems contract with Britain’s Ministry of Defense to supply 100 Bronco tracked all-terrain vehicles for service in Afghanistan. Known as the “Warthog” in British military service, that sale is largely seen within international defense circles as significant in demonstrating Singapore’s small economy’s outsized ability in developing, building, and marketing entire weapon systems for export, even to major defense industrial powers. As of 2022, Singapore ranks 45th in the international arms export market.
On top of these big-ticket weapons systems export successes, Singapore has also had a long history of exporting munitions and small arms, however a checkered history marred with accusations of illicit arms sales, export ban circumvention, and corrupt involvement in foreign military procurement programs.
For instance, in the 1980s Sweden for a time banned all arms exports to Singapore after evidence came to light showing the island-state’s role as a conduit in facilitating Swedish arms and ammunition to be shipped to hostile countries such as Iran via Unicorn International, an associated company of Chartered Industries of Singapore (CIS). CIS was the forerunner of today’s ST Engineering and was originally established as a subsidiary of the country’s Ministry of Defense in an effort to build up its domestic small arms ammunition production capability.
This itself was part of a larger “Bofors Arms Scandal” in which Swedish arms manufacturers were found to have deliberately violated or circumvented prohibitions on arms sales and resales to countries proscribed by the Swedish government, sometimes involving bribery of foreign officials including Singaporean ones. In March 1988 Tan Kok Cheng, an arms company general manager was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment and a substantial fine for his role in the Bofors scandal, whereby he had accepted over S$600,000 (US$444,000) in return for giving business to Bofors.
ST Engineering’s last attempt at scoring a major arms sale in Asia prior to its Kazakh success failed spectacularly in 2012 when the Indian government blacklisted it for a decade from seeking any Indian defense contracts owing to its implication in a scandal centered on the former Director-General of Indian Ordnance Factory, Sudipta Ghosh, who received bribes from foreign vendors. The blacklisting cost ST Engineering a lucrative Indian Army contract to supply 145 155-mm towed artillery guns based on its Pegasus super lightweight howitzer. In the end, India chose to buy American M777 ultralight howitzers in December 2016.
More recently, in 2022 Singapore’s military industrial complex was accused of helping to broker substantial illicit arms deals with Myanmar’s military junta both before and after its February 2021 coup against the democratically elected civilian government. After the April 2022 publication of an op-ed by US Department of State Counselor Derek Chollet in The Straits Times and a 2023 report by UN Special Rapporteur Tom Andrews fingered Singapore-based companies of having directly sold or facilitated reselling of arms worth US$254 million to Myanmar’s junta, Singapore was compelled to harden its previously indiscriminating welcoming attitude and significantly curtailed its arms trade with Myanmar to the tune of US$100 million by June 2024.
With post-Soviet Kazakhstan still being described by various human rights and democracy observer organizations as heavily politically repressed with frequent human rights violations under the authoritarian regime formerly ruled by strongman president Nursultan Nazarbayev and currently led by his protégé successor Kassym-Jomart Tokayev (who had begun his political career as a Soviet diplomat in Singapore), all evidence indicates that Singapore remains as comfortable as ever with conducting arms business with anybody and everybody for the right price.[/td]
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Singapore Scores a Kazakh Arms Deal
Island state hits above its weight as weapons dealer
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By: Andy Wong Ming Jun
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The choice of Singapore as its latest arms dealer is of potential interest due to the demonstration of Astana’s balancing of a desire to diversify and modernize its military along western lines, against the potential of angering Moscow by seeking out NATO member states such as France and Spain which have historically sold arms to Kazakhstan in small quantities. According to a paper published in August by the Caspian Policy Center, long delays in Russian fulfillment of legacy arms deals have been responsible for a precipitous drop in Russia’s market share of Kazakh arms imports, from 94 percent as recently as 2019 to 48 percent in 2023. The prospects of Kazakhstan and Russia agreeing to new arms sales are further dimmed by Astana’s refusal to recognize Russia’s annexation of Eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk territories, supposedly legitimized by Russian-sponsored referendums held in September 2022.
The main beneficiaries of Russia’s fading arms export presence in Kazakhstan have been Spain and South Africa, the latter having set up a joint venture in June 2014 called “Kazakhstan Paramount Engineering” KPE specializes in designing and producing wheeled armored vehicles, hence its latest collaboration with Singapore’s ST Engineering in adapting the Terrex design for Kazakh domestic production and service.
This would make Kazakhstan the third country in the world to build and operate the Terrex, the second being Ghana through an arms sales agreement with Israel in 2020. There have been previous attempts by Singapore to export the design, such as to the Australian Army under its LAND 400 Mounted Combat Reconnaissance Capability (MCRC) procurement program and the US Marine Corps’ Amphibious Combat Vehicle program, all between 2011 and 2018.
The export success of the Terrex marks the third significant example of Singapore’s history in selling large military assets on the international arms market. As befitting Singapore’s geographical nature as a maritime island state, its first big-ticket sale was a naval amphibious landing ship to the Royal Thai Navy in November 2008 as Thailand sought to build up its humanitarian and disaster relief capabilities after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which claimed more than 5,000 lives on the country’s coast and islands and at least 225,000 worldwide. Launched in March 2011 and commissioned into active service just over a year later, HTMS Angthong was based off the Endurance-class ship design which remains Singapore’s largest domestically constructed warship.
In December 2008 ST Engineering (known then as ST Kinetics) secured a S$330 million (US$222.3 million) land-systems contract with Britain’s Ministry of Defense to supply 100 Bronco tracked all-terrain vehicles for service in Afghanistan. Known as the “Warthog” in British military service, that sale is largely seen within international defense circles as significant in demonstrating Singapore’s small economy’s outsized ability in developing, building, and marketing entire weapon systems for export, even to major defense industrial powers. As of 2022, Singapore ranks 45th in the international arms export market.
On top of these big-ticket weapons systems export successes, Singapore has also had a long history of exporting munitions and small arms, however a checkered history marred with accusations of illicit arms sales, export ban circumvention, and corrupt involvement in foreign military procurement programs.
For instance, in the 1980s Sweden for a time banned all arms exports to Singapore after evidence came to light showing the island-state’s role as a conduit in facilitating Swedish arms and ammunition to be shipped to hostile countries such as Iran via Unicorn International, an associated company of Chartered Industries of Singapore (CIS). CIS was the forerunner of today’s ST Engineering and was originally established as a subsidiary of the country’s Ministry of Defense in an effort to build up its domestic small arms ammunition production capability.
This itself was part of a larger “Bofors Arms Scandal” in which Swedish arms manufacturers were found to have deliberately violated or circumvented prohibitions on arms sales and resales to countries proscribed by the Swedish government, sometimes involving bribery of foreign officials including Singaporean ones. In March 1988 Tan Kok Cheng, an arms company general manager was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment and a substantial fine for his role in the Bofors scandal, whereby he had accepted over S$600,000 (US$444,000) in return for giving business to Bofors.
ST Engineering’s last attempt at scoring a major arms sale in Asia prior to its Kazakh success failed spectacularly in 2012 when the Indian government blacklisted it for a decade from seeking any Indian defense contracts owing to its implication in a scandal centered on the former Director-General of Indian Ordnance Factory, Sudipta Ghosh, who received bribes from foreign vendors. The blacklisting cost ST Engineering a lucrative Indian Army contract to supply 145 155-mm towed artillery guns based on its Pegasus super lightweight howitzer. In the end, India chose to buy American M777 ultralight howitzers in December 2016.
More recently, in 2022 Singapore’s military industrial complex was accused of helping to broker substantial illicit arms deals with Myanmar’s military junta both before and after its February 2021 coup against the democratically elected civilian government. After the April 2022 publication of an op-ed by US Department of State Counselor Derek Chollet in The Straits Times and a 2023 report by UN Special Rapporteur Tom Andrews fingered Singapore-based companies of having directly sold or facilitated reselling of arms worth US$254 million to Myanmar’s junta, Singapore was compelled to harden its previously indiscriminating welcoming attitude and significantly curtailed its arms trade with Myanmar to the tune of US$100 million by June 2024.
With post-Soviet Kazakhstan still being described by various human rights and democracy observer organizations as heavily politically repressed with frequent human rights violations under the authoritarian regime formerly ruled by strongman president Nursultan Nazarbayev and currently led by his protégé successor Kassym-Jomart Tokayev (who had begun his political career as a Soviet diplomat in Singapore), all evidence indicates that Singapore remains as comfortable as ever with conducting arms business with anybody and everybody for the right price.
