The Warthog Singapore Built That The Taliban Don't Want To Know

British forces have brought a new weapon to bear against the Taliban who “simply don’t want to know” when it arrives on the battlefield, commanders have said.

The Warthog is a 22-ton tracked armoured vehicle whose off-road ability allows it to frequently outflank the fleet-footed Taliban.
The vehicle’s success has led to a rethink on British tactics as they are not only able to deliver troops, supplies but they can also bring down heavy firepower from unexpected directions.

It can carry up to a dozen soldiers who can be deployed either to fight insurgents or engage with the local population to build up an intelligence picture of tribal communities.

It has almost certainly saved lives after 11 Warthogs were hit in one tour by large IEDs (Improvised Explosive Device) without anyone inside being killed although two were badly wounded.
The Warthog has also proved adept at being able to drive through the notoriously difficult terrain of Helmand’s irrigated “green zone”.

In one epic six week long battle earlier this year the vehicles provided a perimeter defence for the Royal Engineers as they laid a key road in central Helmand called Route Trident. Previously the Sappers had come under daily attack but with the heavy weaponry such as .50 calibre heavy machine guns and 40mm grenade machine guns the Warthogs kept the Taliban at bay.

With many ambushes happening in the easily defended Green Zone of tree-lined irrigation ditches the Warthogs allow troops to get behind the enemy’s backs.

“You can put Warthog into places you would not dream of with other armoured vehicles as it has very low ground pressure giving us the ability to move around the battlespace in a completely different way,” Major James Cameron, the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment squadron commander, the first to use the vehicle on operations.

“We have been able to manoeuvre in an extraordinary way. Literally we can go over ditches, swim rivers or go up ravines getting right in behind the enemy where they least expect us.

“We run on them at speed and before they know anything about it we are right on top of them.”

On one occasion Major Cameron was in an engagement with 30 Taliban in which he fired 1,200 rounds through his turret-mounted GPMG.

Towards the end of their six month tour radio intelligence has shown the Taliban commanders warning their men “don’t fire at the tank”.

The Warthog is unique in that it is the first armoured vehicle to be built for a Western army by an Asian company. Singapore based ST Kinetics won a £150 million contract for 115 vehicles as the MoD looked for a robust all-terrain vehicle.

STK managed to produce the first Warthog within nine months of the order, on time and ahead of schedule although there was a delay of several months as the armour protection was improved.

The Warthog is replacing the BAE Systems built Viking which is being withdrawn from service after almost a quarter of the fleet was destroyed by Taliban bombs.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/8681903/Taliban-dont-want-to-know-in-Warthog-fight.html

Ensuring There's Always Enough Water

 

 Singapore has 17 reservoirs today.

But do you know that we also have another reservoir across the Causeway?

The Linggiu Reservoir in Johor is FIVE TIMES LARGER than all of the 17 reservoirs put together. It was constructed by the PUB following a 1990 treaty supplementary to Singapore's 1962 Water Agreement with Malaysia.

Due to the presistent dry weather, the Linggiu Reservoir is now more than half empty.

While Johor is into their 4th month of water rationing, water here continues to flow steady.

This is an unappreciated blessing. It did not arise out of good fortune. It was the result of careful planning and conscientious implementation by PUB and the Government.

If the dry weather persists, we WILL eventually be affected. Imported water (which can meet half of our daily demand for drinking water) is under threat and steadily depleting.

Demand for water will increase. There is just not enough space in Singapore to collect and store all the water that we need.

[Although right on the Equator and in the tropics, Singapore is actually a severely water-challenged country. We spend a lot of time and devote a lot of resources in planning for the future. PUB always builds ahead of demand. Construction of Singapore's third desalination plant will soon commence. Plans for a fourth have just been announced. And you can be sure that we are busy working on the one after that.

Water security is a matter of life and death for us in Singapore. Our existence as a sovereign nation is directly contingent on enduring water security.

The late Mr Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's first Prime Minister, recognised this fact from day one, and worked tirelessly throughout his life to secure our water future. He once said: "Water dominated every other policy. Every other policy had to bend at the knees for water survival."

Singapore's water strategy comes in three parts.

First of all, we have to maximise our own yield. So we strive to collect every drop of rain that falls here. This means turning as much of Singapore as possible into a water catchment, and keeping our drains, canals and waterways pristine.

Second, we have to think of water as an endlessly reusable resource. In our minds, the H2O molecule is never lost. Water can always be reclaimed and re-treated so that it can be drunk again.

PUB is a world leader in this. Today, we are able to turn wastewater into sweet water for very little money. We reclaim every drop of sewage and turn much of it into drinking water again.

And third, because Singapore is surrounded by sea, we turn seawater into drinking water. When membrane separation technology made desalination economically viable, PUB adopted it with great zeal. And we continue to research better desalination technology to find less expensive ways of desalting water.

Our plan, in the long run, is for fully 80 per cent of Singapore's water needs to be met by desalinated and recycled water.
.
.
.
Despite severely limiting geographic constraints, today's Singapore is not short of water.

As long as we at PUB continue to be smart and clear-eyed about our nation's water situation, and do our work well, there should always be enough water. This is possible only because we have used our imagination, researching and testing continuously, and have exploited technology to overcome our water challenges.

In this way, we have turned disadvantage into strength, and seemingly insurmountable vulnerability into endless opportunity.] - By Ng Joo Hee (excerpt)

http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/ensuring-theres-enough-water-always?utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#xtor=CS1-10

Singapore's Ingenious Way To Save Water

 It rains a lot in Singapore — approximately 94 inches a year.

But rather than let that water evaporate wastefully on the streets and sidewalks, Singapore sets a standard the rest of the world would be smart to adopt: The city-state soaks up water like a giant sponge.

By recycling the rainwater through built-in runoff capture systems, Singapore can reduce both the costs of water purification and its environmental impact.

Scientists believe our global water crisis is only getting worse. By 2025, two-thirds of the world population will struggle to find water and 1.8 billion people won't have any at all.

Using recycled water could be a solution.

In China, roughly a dozen cities have started brainstorming what that might look like — turning so-called "grey infrastructure" into green infrastructure by adding the ability to store rainwater. Mostly, these plans address rampant flooding that could quickly clear small towns and villages.

But no country has such a robust system already in place as Singapore, where half the land area is equipped to capture rainwater in gutters, barrels, tanks, and reservoirs.

The most sophisticated of those systems is at the Changi Airport. Between 28 and 33% of all water used in the airport comes from captured rainwater, which is stored in two reservoirs.

One reservoir balances the flow of water when tides are high, while the other collects runoffs from runways and green areas.

Each year, the infrastructure saves the airport more than $275,000 for non-potable uses, like flushing toilets and performing firefighting drills.

Scattered elsewhere around Singapore are capture systems on top of high-rise apartment buildings, in which 86% of citizens call home.

Rooftop harvesting equipment saves roughly 14 cents per cubic meter of water over relying on nearby rivers and streams or purifying water that flows through soil.

When the rainwater isn't collecting on roofs, it's soaking into the urban environment at-large.
There's a fascinating backstory to Singapore's urban sponge scheme.

In the mid 1980s, Singapore's crisis of clean water got so bad that the country had no choice but to get creative. While it had plenty of rainwater, it had no way of capturing it. Water would mix with soil and other contaminants making it unfit for use. So, in 1986 Singapore took the first step in water conservation, creating the the Sungei Seletar-Bedok water scheme.

The existing Seletar Reservoir was dammed to divide it in half. The separation essentially allowed polluted runoff water to collect elsewhere, in the Bedok reservoir, which was designed for treatment, while the cleaner part of the storm water collected in newly created Lower Seletar Reservoir.

In the decades since, Singapore has transformed its culture into one that prizes its ability to reuse rainwater. Even residents in the outskirts have transformed their homes into capture systems as a means of watering their lawns or, with the right treatment, staying hydrated.

If other countries want to have any hope of avoiding a water crisis, they'll need to get as creative as Singapore.