City, base begin preparing for Singapore units

The arrival within the next nine months of the Republic of Singapore Air Force squadron to Mountain Home AFB is important not only to the base and the community, but both the United States and Singapore, Mayor Tom Rist believes.

Two small advance teams will arrive on base in September to begin laying the groundwork for the squadron's arrival. Shortly after the first of the year the bulk of the 200 Singaporean air and ground crews, along with their families and about 100 private contractors (most ex-USAF personnel), will begin arriving to stand up the 428th Fighter Squadron (the "Bucanneers"). By April the squadron should be operational and in June a special inauguration and flag-raising ceremony will be held that will include top officials from the Republic of Singapore, Air Combat Command, the United States Air Force and the U.S. Department of Defense.

The squadron will be flying the most advanced version of the F-15, the SG model, with the pilots literally flying the first of the top-of-the-line fighter-bombers off the Boeing assembly line in St. Louis directly to Mountain Home AFB. Col. James Browne, the 366th Wing Fighter Commander at Mountain Home AFB, admitted that there may be a little bit of "professional jealousy," among his own pilots, who will be flying older versions of the F-15E that don't include some of the advanced avionics of the SG model, but the ability to train together will benefit both nations.

In preparation for the arrival of the squadron, Browne, Command Chief Master Sergeant Ron McCarthy, Mayor Tom Rist and Chamber Military Affairs Committee leader Alan Bermensolo traveled to Singapore earlier this month for a series of briefings and to learn more about the tiny country, which has virtually no airspace in which to train.

Singapore is literally one big city of four million people at the tip of the Malaysian peninsula. The entire country would fit into southern Elmore County below the foothills of the mountains with room left to spare.

It is an economic powerhouse in Asia with a standard of living equal to that of the western democracies and is strategically vital to western interests because it controls the Straights of Malacca, through which nearly half the world's oil supplies and cargo shipping pass.

After meeting with the U.S. ambassador, who stressed the importance of the relationship Singapore is establishing with the United States by locating the first Singaporean F-15 squadron at Mountain Home AFB (a similar F-16 training squadron is stationed at Luke AFB), the four men from the base and community spent nearly a week, from Aug. 5-10, touring the country and its sole airbase.

Rist came away impressed with the nation, its air force and its people.

"They are an extremely pleasant people to deal with," he said, "very intelligent, patient and determined."

From the official visits with Singaporean leaders to conversations in the marketplaces with ordinary citizens, "we were shown tremendous hospitality," Rist said.

"From our standpoint, we are going to welcome the Singaporeans to our community and show them all the hospitality they showed us."

Language shouldn't be a problem. English is the official language of the former British colony and is the "public" language used in the country. In their homes, Singaporeans speak a wide range of languages, with Mandarin Chinese most common, followed by Hindi.

Both the base and the community will be making efforts to accommodate various aspects of the Singaporean culture, but one area that probably will be lacking are religious facilities and services. Most Singaporeans are Buddhist, followed by Hindu and Muslim. Christians form only a small portion of Singaporean society. Boise has a small Hindu and Muslim population, but no temples or mosques, and the nearest Buddhist temple is in Ontario, but that practices a form of Buddhism most commonly found in Japan.

Col. Browne said Singaporean officials told them "not to worry about that," but said it was one of the issues that will be discussed when he sends a team this fall to Luke AFB to help learn more about how the Singaporean F-16 training squadron there has assimilated to the base and the community.

Singaporean cusine also is considerably different than American food. Browne said there have been no plans at this point to provide special food at the commissary for the Singaporeans "but it is something we are going to look into." Singaporean officials have made their people aware of specialty Asian markets and restaruants in Boise that could cater to their needs. But overall, Browne said, Singaporean officials have not been demanding any special considerations for their cultural needs.

Rist said the city's economic development office has been directed to see what can be done about encouraging specialty markets and restaurants that would meet their cultural needs to locate in Mountain Home.

At the same time, Rist said, "I think the thing that will be the biggest change for them will be our wide open spaces. They're not used to anything like that at all." Most of Singapore is high-rise buildings with typical Asian crowding. The country has actually imported soil and done dredging to increase its land mass area (by nearly 10 percent since it became an independent nation in the early 1960s), in order to accommodate its growing population.

Singapore also has a rigourous and highly praised educational system. As a result, almost all of the children that will be accompanying the families that arrive here will be elementary age or younger. The older children of the families, those of junior high and high school age, will probably be left behind "because that's a really important stage in their education," Browne said, noting that quality education is highly stressed in Singaporean society.

The Singaporean educational system operates on a trimester system, with only brief periods of breaks between semesters.

Locally, the students will be treated as if they were regular air force dependents, in terms of state and federal funding allocations to the school district, and schools Supt. Tim McMurtrey has said in the past that because of the high educational standards in Singapore the students should be "at, or maybe even a little above" the standards here for the grade levels they'll be entering.

The district is currently working on plans to make the students' transition into American schools as seamless as possible.

Browne said the only problems he anticipated seeing on base would be differences in training techniques. The USAF trains for a very large force of more than 300,000 airmen. The Singapore Air Force is less than 10 percent the size of the USAF, "so their training needs are a little bit different."

But overall, Browne said, when the Singapore air and ground crews arrive "they'll be treated just like regular (USAF) airmen."

That means, for example, they'll face the same waiting lists for base housing. Both Browne and Rist said they expected most of the Singaporeans to find housing in town, mainly renting or leasing housing, which will put a premium on those facilities locally. Browne said that unlike the USAF, however, Singaporean officials will not let their personnel live in Boise. "They'll be expected to live either on base or the local community."

Another major impact on the local community is almost certainly going to be with local car dealers.

Vehicles are extremely expensive in Singapore (often five times the price that would be paid in the United States for similar makes and models), so Rist said he expects many of them will want to buy a car when they get here. "That's going to be one of the few things they're going to find here that they may not have had in Singapore," he said.

The new Singaporean squadron, the 428th FS, is not a new unit. The unit had existed at Canon AFB flying the F-16s that have been the backbone of the Singapore Air Force in the past. But that unit stood down several years ago. It is being reactivated here to accommodate the new F-15s that Singapore has never flown before.

Currently, the contract between the United States and the Republic of Singapore calls for the squadron to be on base at least five years, with an option to extend that contract to 20 years, a move both nations, at this point, believe is likely.

The squadron will help mitigate the loss of the 390th Fighter Squadron, which is scheduled to be disbanded and its F-15C aircraft reallocated across the USAF as part of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission plan. The squadron will slowly be reduced in strength, beginning next summer, with the flag officially going down on the unit in the fall of 2010, under the current USAF schedule, Browne said.

Browne said he was looking forward to having the 428th become one of the base tenant units. "I'm ecstatic about their being part of the Gunfighters," he said.

Rist echoed those comments. "I think they're going to bring a lot to this community, and I know Mountain Home. We'll be welcoming them with open arms. This is important. We're looking forward to them being here.