IDAHO, United States: A range of unmanned aerial systems and vehicles will feature more heavily at the latest edition of the Singapore Armed Forces’ (SAF) Exercise Forging Sabre.
The 10th iteration of the biennial military drill kicked off on Sep 6 and will run until Sep 21 at the Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho state in the US.
Here, the SAF will conduct large-scale and realistic training at an airspace more than 20 times the size of Singapore, the Ministry of Defence (MINDEF) said on Tuesday (Sep 9).
More than 800 personnel from across the SAF and defence technology community will be participating.
Exercise Forging Sabre has provided the SAF the opportunity to validate and experiment with strike capabilities and different operational concepts of operations since the inaugural edition in 2005.
This year, 24 drones – including commercial ones manufactured by the likes of Skydio – will be involved, more than double the 11 in the 2023 exercise.
The Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) will introduce a variety of micro or mini-unmanned aerial systems (UAS) for surveillance operations, said MINDEF.
A newly established unit under the air force’s UAS Warfare and Tactics Centre will trial small off-the-shelf drones.
Known as Drone Rapid Operationalisation, Integration and Deployment or DROID, it researches, experiments and trials small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for SAF operations.
Other assets that will be involved in the exercise include 12 F-15SG, nine upgraded F-16 fighter jets, four AH-64D Apache helicopters, three Heron 1 UAVs and an A330 Multi-Role Tanker Transport (MRTT).
