Dealing With Organised Crime

Do you know why the Malaysian government loves the defence and aerospace sector?

It's certainly not because of the desire to progress or upgrade one's technology. One must be truly gullible to believe that.

It's all about doing dealings that are classified information. This way, under the Official Secrets Act, the public has no privy to the underhanded dealings and corruption of the government.

This was precisely how the Malaysian Government signed an agreement with French DCNS and Spainish Navantia for the procurement of two Scorpene class submarines.

The procurement contract was through direct negotiation with the manufacturing companies, said to be with the service of Perimekar Sdn Bhd.

SUARAM is pursuing the government by linking up with leading human rights lawyers in France, to file a complaint with the French judicial system.

A preliminary investigation was initiated to enable access to information, to the government contracts signed with Perimekar and other information classified as government secrets in Malaysia.

The French courts accepted the request to investigate the claim of corruption for a payment amounting to Euro 114 million made as commissions from DCNS to Perimekar.

It's good news so far. But SUARAM need help, so go to their website to see how you can be of use.

Third Line Of Defence

I expect our National News Agency to spout a lot of rubbish.

It is even a given for our Prime Minister to babble nonsense.

But still, nothing prepared me for this.

I guess the fourth line of defence would be to show this article to enemies of Malaysia so that they die laughing.

No One Questioned Import Of Fighter Aircraft Parts?

It appears that exporting fighter aircraft parts to Malaysia is a blissfully easy operation.

Now we're neither talking plastic, toy aircraft here nor some of the many Tamiya small scaled models which I own and don't know what to do with.

Nor are we discussing home appliances, cute Nintendo or Playstation games or even automotive parts.

MILITARY FIGHTER AIRCRAFT parts, ladies and gentlemen.

As far as I know, the Malaysian government does not have any F-14s within its fleet. We have F-18s, MiG-29s and we have the infamous Su-30MKM.

But not any F-14s.

NY man pleads guilty to arms exports to Malaysia

But evidently, no one thinks it's out of the ordinary if a Pakistani brings component parts into Malaysia for an aircraft we do not possess.

And what does our government have to say about this?

The Deputy Prime Minister also said the government had no knowledge of companies illegally importing F-5 and F-14 military fighter jet parts into the country.

"It cannot be with the government as we have no knowledge whatsoever about it. I do not know if there are private companies involved in this.

"There is no stopping them to buy on their own accord without informing us. We are not in the business of selling parts to a third country. We don't do that. I cannot determine if any company had sought for the parts," he said.

However Najib, who is also the Defence Minister, said the government would not hesitate to act against any company if it had breached the law of the country.

You don't seem to know much about this country, do you Najib? And being Defence Minsister at that.

We do need to cut a sizable amount of your entertainment allowance, methinks. You're spending too much time playing around instead of doing your job.

Though if you didn't get a huge cut out of this deal, there's plenty to annoyed about, I'd say.

Singapore's New Baby

I'm disturbed.

Singapore is not content on being the economic superpower in this region.

These days it has ventured into defense systems, building some rather formidable weaponry and even making a foray into the international market.

It's not unexpected after all, for even Israel being a tiny little country in the middle of nowhere is famous for its Mossad and Uzis.

This new baby is under the wing of Singapore Technologies (no surprise there) Kinetics. Now I've heard of ST Aerospace, but not ST Kinetics. My bad.

So this ST Kinetics has come up with this Low Velocity Air-Burst Munition System (LV ABMS), comprising a fire control system (FCS) and the high explosive (HE) air bursting munition (ABM).

The damn thing has a laser rangefinder with a maximum range of 500m (or on option 800m).

It's fitted with an advanced programmable time based fuze that is not armed until it is 14 to 28m from the weapon and enables the projectile to be detonated above the target for maximum effect.

Spiffy.

So is it the only one in the market then? No.

But what is of interest, is that Singapore is developing its capabilities while we Malaysians are merely obtaining contracts to manufacture.

They are broadening their horizons while it comes to technology. We're still arguing about which bumiputra should get his share of "special rights".

They are building lighthouses on our rocks. We're losing the entire rock because of flimsy evidence and lousy counsel.

Expect much more from Singapore in the near future.

Or better still - beware of them.