Singapore’s decision several years ago to acquire eight F-35A and 12 F-35B combat aircraft from the United States enables the island-state’s air force to maintain a qualitative advantage over regional peers. These are fifth-generation fighters with advanced capabilities.
However, recent news on the F-35s’ future basing raises an important issue; how can Singapore continue to benefit from its close defence relationship with the United States without allowing excessive dependence on a single supplier to become a vulnerability?
The F-35As are intended to operate from Tengah Air Base in western Singapore. Meanwhile, the F-35Bs are being based permanently at Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Arkansas, United States, for training.
On the surface, basing the F-35Bs in the United States for training makes sense. Singapore simply does not have enough airspace for realistic, high-end fighter training. The United States provides vast training ranges, sophisticated infrastructure and opportunities to train alongside American pilots flying the F-35s. This arrangement is not new. Singapore has maintained fighter training detachments in the United States, from Alaska to Nevada, for decades.
However, permanently deploying F-35Bs in the United States raises several concerns.
First, Singapore’s decision to acquire the F-35Bs was driven by their capabilities - the F-35Bs can perform short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing (STOVL), making them suitable for land-scarce Singapore. The STOVL capability lets the F-35Bs operate from shorter, more constrained surfaces than conventional fighters. This is why the F-35Bs were chosen: a point driven by the Next-Generation Fighter Project Office of the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) on why the F-35Bs were selected in the first place.
Second, the F-35B is more than simply another advanced fighter aircraft. Its STOVL capability could help address one of Singapore’s most significant military vulnerabilities: concentrating air power at a very small number of fixed air bases.
In a major conflict, Singapore’s air bases would be obvious targets. Runways could be cratered, aircraft shelters damaged, and fuel, ammunition and maintenance facilities destroyed. A fighter force dependent on a handful of conventional airfields could therefore be severely constrained.
This is where the F-35B could offer Singapore an important additional option. The RSAF could eventually develop a more distributed concept of operations, allowing F-35Bs to operate from dispersed locations supported by mobile fuel, weapons and maintenance systems. Such an approach could make Singapore’s air power considerably more difficult to neutralise on the ground.
If the twelve F-35Bs are particularly well suited to Singapore’s geographical constraints, why are they permanently based thousands of kilometres away in the United States? If the aircraft’s greatest operational advantage lies in its ability to operate without conventional runways, should Singapore eventually use that capability more at home?
If Singapore acquired the F-35B partly because its STOVL capability suits a land-scarce country, it should seek to exploit that advantage as fully as possible. No publicly available evidence suggests that Washington required Singapore to base its F-35Bs in the United States as a condition of their sale.
However, American arms transfers can and do include strict conditions governing the use, deployment, or storage of sensitive military equipment. In 2003, Washington sold AIM-120 air-to-air missiles to Taiwan on the condition that they be stored in the United States and released only if China acquired a comparable weapons system.
Singapore is unlikely to be entirely exempt from such considerations. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s records, Singapore acquired AIM-120C AMRAAM long-range air-to-air missiles in 2001, but they were reportedly stored in the United States until they were eventually delivered to Singapore in 2003, when China and Vietnam introduced AA-12 air-to-air missiles into their inventories in 2002/2003.
An even broader strategic concern is the growing concentration of the RSAF’s future combat fleet around American platforms. Singapore already operates the F-15SG and F-16, while the F-35A and F-35B will form the next generation of its combat aircraft. This brings considerable advantages, including commonality, interoperability, access to advanced technology and deep integration with the wider US defence ecosystem.
Yet an overwhelming dependence on the United States for Singapore’s entire combat aircraft fleet could also create significant strategic, operational and geopolitical vulnerabilities. A close alignment with Washington may also create important strategic chokepoints.
Singapore’s future air power could become heavily dependent on continued access to American weapons, spare parts, software upgrades, maintenance support and, more critically, political approval. This could expose Singapore to political pressure from the United States to serve the latter interests, which may not necessarily align with Singapore’s.
The current Trump administration has clearly stated that “it is the policy of the United States to intentionally use arms transfers as a tool of American foreign policy”. The threat early this year to halt arms sales to allies in Europe is one prime example.
For a small state whose defence strategy has long emphasised strategic autonomy and resilience, this raises a fundamental question: how can it ensure that its security and defence needs are not jeopardised by Washington’s unpredictability?
