I agree with the letter writer of Different tanks for different roles that we should consider all aspects before spending a lot of money on military hardware.

I was just trying to allay fears that the tanks would be used against our neighbours, and against Singapore in particular, in the light of the present situation.

If ever our army top brass decide to attack Singapore, the tanks will have to cross the causeway or the second link to get into Singapore. The Singapore air force will just blow up the causeway and second link to smithereens and you will have stranded giants.

In the course of peacekeeping, you do not know where or when you have to deploy your troops. If our troops were involved in the current Middle-East conflict, they would have to bear in mind that the Israelis have main battle tanks. They will need highly mobile and lethal battle tanks to intimidate the enemy from attacking us.

You just cannot go shopping for the machines only when the need arises; thus we have to always be prepared!

In large-scale conventional warfare, it is not enough just to have these tanks as they are vulnerable to attack by helicopters. The Longbow Apache is an all-weather, day and night "tank-buster" helicopter (as seen on page 2 of Asian Defence & Diplomacy March 2002 issue), 20 units of which is being bought by Singapore.

The Singapore air force is also rated to be the most advanced in South East Asia. They will then have about 120 fighter planes as they already have about 60 F-16s and are upgrading their F-5Es to about 40. They are more than a match to our F-18 (8), Mig 29 (17) and Hawk Light fighter (about 28).

The numbers game has swung.

In a conventional warfare before you send your tanks to attack, you need to bomb the enemy defences by using your planes followed by saturation artillery fire. Only when the defence is destroyed, then can the tanks move in. But at any time, the enemy helicopters can pop up and engage the tanks.

So will we be able to win this "war"? We do not have any dedicated attack helicopters yet.

In terms of cost and transfer of technology, post-Warsaw pact, countries are willing to sell their best hardware at a fraction of the cost that any Nato countries are willing to pay and they (Polish) are willing to transfer technology.

Lighter tanks as suggested by the letter writer will not necessarily cost cheaper compared with those mean heavy battle tanks. For the writers information, the Malaysian peace-keepers were using Simbas (Light Armoured Vehicles) in Somalia. It was the "soft skin armour" which contributed to the deaths of our soldiers.

If you read articles on the Web on Black Hawk Down , the American forces called the vehicle "garbage trucks". And there is a difference between a light tank as compared with light armoured vehicles.

The Polish PT-91 (Twardy) is a proven main battle tank (configured from the proven T-72 Russian mbt) and its cost is cheaper compared with other tanks (American M-60 or Swedish Hagglund CV90120, a light tank), so why not select the best? Its like paying Wiras price for a Perdana.

If our soldiers are risking their lives in peace-keeping duties, the least we can do is to equip them the new and powerful weapons that will intimidate those who plan to attack them. It will boost morale and they can keep their head up when they meet their fellow peace-keepers from other countries.