Mock Surprise Exercise
Still remember 4 years ago while I was still a NSF. My unit, like most active unit, will be assigned to perform Alert Red duties. Alert Red means your unit will be the first to go eat bullet front line should anyone tries to attack singapore. One company will stay in camp 24/7 including weekends. This company is suppose to move out within 7 minutes when the alarm goes off. The rest of the units will carry a oh piang pager when booking out.
This is how prepared we are in defence.
There will be a test to see how prepared your unit is. The top will activate the unit for an exercise and we are suppose to deploy at some area. This exercise is suppose to be a surprise. Yeah, right.
There can be no surprise when it comes to mock exercise.
Those who are involved in planning the mock exercise will leak out information regarding the date and time when the exercise is supposed to be held. Once the information reaches those involved in the exercise, they will put in extra effort to prepare for the exercise to ensure that they don't fail the test. Welcome to SAF.
Our unit got the info about the date and time of the exercise more than 1 week before hand. Everyone spend the week preparing for that "surprise" exercise. It look so articifial. On the day of the exercise, everyone were told to wake up earlier than usual to have breakfast. We draw our arms from the armskote earlier than usual and change to our number 4 uniform earlier than usual. Everyone was in full gears before the alarm was sounded.
So everyone was ready, sitting in their bunk, with the pager on the table..... waiting..... waiting..... waiting.....
Finally, the alarm sounded, the company who is supposed to move out within 7 minutes got fall in faster than usual. All our pagers sounded and we all cheered. We are activated for a "surprised" mock exercise.
This is how "wayang" things are...... And I guess things are still the same 4 years later.
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Exercise Northstar V was conducted over the island today morning. It is suppose to be a surprise mock exercise. But I bet all the personnel involved in the exercise were already in full gears before the first "bomb blast" went off.
What is the point?
This is how prepared we are in defence.
There will be a test to see how prepared your unit is. The top will activate the unit for an exercise and we are suppose to deploy at some area. This exercise is suppose to be a surprise. Yeah, right.
There can be no surprise when it comes to mock exercise.
Those who are involved in planning the mock exercise will leak out information regarding the date and time when the exercise is supposed to be held. Once the information reaches those involved in the exercise, they will put in extra effort to prepare for the exercise to ensure that they don't fail the test. Welcome to SAF.
Our unit got the info about the date and time of the exercise more than 1 week before hand. Everyone spend the week preparing for that "surprise" exercise. It look so articifial. On the day of the exercise, everyone were told to wake up earlier than usual to have breakfast. We draw our arms from the armskote earlier than usual and change to our number 4 uniform earlier than usual. Everyone was in full gears before the alarm was sounded.
So everyone was ready, sitting in their bunk, with the pager on the table..... waiting..... waiting..... waiting.....
Finally, the alarm sounded, the company who is supposed to move out within 7 minutes got fall in faster than usual. All our pagers sounded and we all cheered. We are activated for a "surprised" mock exercise.
This is how "wayang" things are...... And I guess things are still the same 4 years later.
-----------------------------
Exercise Northstar V was conducted over the island today morning. It is suppose to be a surprise mock exercise. But I bet all the personnel involved in the exercise were already in full gears before the first "bomb blast" went off.
What is the point?
