The Singapore Armed Forces made a big impact when it organised Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s state funeral in March that ran without a hitch despite the huge logistics involved. And no wonder. The military has had years of practice organising large-scale events. The payoffs include exposure to mass-scale situations in real-time conditions. But is this what we want of our fighting men? Insight takes a look.

… “I wouldn’t say only the SAF can handle the organisation of such events, but few other organisations have the discipline and systems,” adds Mr Ho Shu Huang, an associate research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University.