Current Chief of Staff (Naval Staff) will assume top post on Aug 31
The navy will soon have a new man at the helm.
Republic of Singapore Navy chief Ronnie Tay will relinquish command on Aug 31 after more than four years at the top, according to a statement from the Defence Ministry (Mindef) yesterday.
Rear-Adm (one-star) Chew Man Leong, 39, will be the new chief of navy. He now holds the Chief of Staff (Naval Staff) position.
Mindef said the command change is part of the ongoing process of leadership renewal.
Rear-Adm Chew joined the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) in December 1985. In the course of his military career, he has headed the Naval Operations Department and was Fleet Commander, among other positions.
As Fleet Commander, he played a pivotal role in restructuring the Fleet to enhance its operational readiness and ability to respond to peacetime contingencies.
The top navy student in his Singapore Command and Staff Course cohort, he successfully led the fleet in many exercises with foreign navies.
Rear-Adm Chew graduated with an engineering degree from Britain’s Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine. He has a master’s degree in management from Leland Stanford Junior University in the United States.
In its statement, Mindef thanks Rear-Adm Tay for his sterling service to the armed forces and excellent contributions to the navy.
The 43-year-old, who enlisted in 1981 and who has been navy chief since April 2003, led the navy as it transformed into a force marked by cutting-edge technology and new fighting doctrines, capable of an even broader range of operations.
He oversaw new capabilities going operational, including the Formidable-class frigates and the Challenger-class submarines, as well as the adoption of unmanned system technologies.
It was during his tenure as navy chief that the navy successfully completed three deployments of a Landing Ship Tank task group to the northern Arabian Gulf, in support of multi-national efforts to re-build Iraq.
Rear-Adm Tay, who has also made significant contributions to defence diplomacy, will be attending the Advanced Management Programme at Insead in France before joining the Administrative Service, Mindef said.