Singapore's Decline in Use of UK Weapons

 On September 16, 2020 Shawn C  commented :

Over the decades, UK military equipment purchases have been reduced, simply as they couldn't offer winning bids. [Pete comment - And also with the withdrawal of UK military forces in 1971 from Singapore much UK equipment left and the colonial-political tradition that promoted UK weapons gradually left.] 

[Still] Singapore did purchase many of its initial military equipment from the UK in the early 1970s, including Hawker Hunters, Strikemasters, Bloodhound and Rapier missiles. The Land Rovers were part of an initial batch that includes Bedford lorries and Ford M151 jeeps.

The first Singapore army rifles were SLRs [Pete comment - SLRs at 7.62mm calibre were more suited to long range NATO flat or rolling hill country, heavy, long to swing around in the jungle, heavy bullets hence fewer carried, less suited to in close quarter fighting, not fully auto, so unsuited to Singapore jungle warfare], but quickly changed to M-16s [suitable but could/can jam on jungle mud/dust] on the advice of Israeli military advisors. 

That kicked off the whole Chartered Industry of Singapore saga when an entire M-16 factory was bought from Colt turn-key, then after finishing the Singapore Army production run Colt refused to let Singapore export to countries in the region, which lead Singapore developing the SAR-80/88, an AR-18 derivative design from Sterling Arms in the UK.

 The last major attempt from the UK was the BAe led Eurofighter Typhoon [and Rafale] bids in 2005 that lost to the F-15SG. 

After Rapier SAMs were replaced with [the Israeli] SPYDERs in 2011, Shawn doesn't think the Singapore Air Force has any major equipment sourced from the UK.