Seems like Malaysia was trying to flex muscles during Singapore's National Day Parade but for the love of me I have no idea why they keep doing things like this over the years.
On August 21, during the NDP, the Malaysian Army posted a comical video showing a hypothetical paratrooper trop, connecting two cities across a body of water and threatening to obliterate the enemy.
What's the purpose?
To highlight how underequipped, broke, disorganized and lacking any planning their military is? (and that they don't know how to upload an HD video to Facebook?)
It's a satire on themselves, like when they sent "Pedoman" (are there no other names for a navy boat?) to infringe on Singaporean waters under Mahathir.
After close to 60 years since separation - at Malaysia's own will - it still hasn't learned anything.
Firstly, that there's really no reason to want conflict with Singapore. Both countries have far more to gain working together (though it seems that Malaysia can't contain its envy of how well SG is doing).
Secondly, despite its diminutive size, Singapore would wipe the Malaysian Armed Forces out relatively quickly.
Why would you want to start a fight that would get you humiliated in a matter of days? Heck, why would you even float the idea if we all know the figures about your 2nd rate military that can barely cobble a few working planes together?
After decades of pillaging the country by the corrupt Malaysian "elites", they can't even buy new fighter jets and have shelved their planned purchase of additional multirole fighters, opting for light attack aircraft instead.
This is why they have only 28 airworthy fighters in service - while Singapore boasts 100 + four F35s on order and an option for eight more in this decade.
(It was announced in May that Malaysia is pursuing RM96.6 billion from those involved in the 1MDB scandal - that's over US$22 billion - easily enough to finance a purchase of 100+ F35 jets.)
Malaysian Army has no attack helicopters, which would be very effective in aiding any ground combat on the peninsula. They don't even have respectable tanks. They bought Polish PT-91, which is an upgraded Soviet T-72 - not a bad tank, but even Poles who sold them these use German Leopard 2's as the core of their armoured forces - just like Singapore does. A single L2 was capable of eliminating at least 2-3 T72s for a single own loss (in reality, probably even more).
Plus, SG has nearly FOUR TIMES as many. Granted, not all are deployed in SG (some are stationed in foreign training grounds e.g. in Germany) - but it still can deploy more than enough to repel the paltry 48 that Malaysia operates. Assuming they would ever engage in ground combat and not be destroyed by the AH-64 helicopters or jets.
To make it even more comical, Malaysia doesn't even have proper amphibious vehicles to invade Singapore quickly and in significant numbers across the straits - so that quip by the officer from the propaganda video about fighting "to the last drop of blood" would easily become true for each and every one of them.
Particularly given the fact that Singapore would quickly achieve air superiority, likely obliterating RMAF in a day or two, given the limited number of aircraft it has and patchy air defences.
Paratroopers landing anywhere in SG can't count on any support and, as a result, would turn into an excellent training practice for Singaporean soldiers.
Without air superiority and effectively trying to invade an island surrounded by a wide moat, Malaysian ground forces would be cannon fodder for Singaporean planes long before the city-state's army would even have to be deployed on the other side of the Straits of Johor.
After a few days of pounding from the air, the only thing left to do would be to go for a leisurely ride up to KL as Malaysian remnants hide in panic in the bushes.
The only explanation I can come up with for this comedy is that someone up north is so desperate to save Malaysia from its politicians that they want to provoke Singapore (knowing that it would quickly win any military conflict) in the hope of having it take control of the country to finally introduce some civilized governance.
This would actually make sense - but I'm not sure SG is this generous.
