Singapore: Indonesia plans to increase the number of its submarines over the next two years to defend its territory as well as protecting international shipping lanes, its defence minister said Saturday.
Purnomo Yusgiantoro also told Reuters that Indonesia was discussing buying 10 more C-130 military transport aircraft with Lockheed Martin but had not come to any agreement.
Curent fleet
Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago with more than 17,000 islands, lies across shipping lanes between the Indian and Pacific oceans as well as between Asia and Australia, heavily used for transporting commodities and energy. It currently has two submarines.
"We have several countries that we think are able to supply them. We want to make sure that it would be compatible to our needs as well as our sea (conditions)," Yusgiantoro said in an interview on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue security conference in Singapore.
"They are very important in order for us to guard sea lanes. We are going to have that in a couple of years," he said, without giving further details.
Yusgiantoro also said the government had earmarked funds in this year's budget to modernise some of its 32 C-130 transport planes, manufactured by Lockheed Martin, and was planning to buy another 10 units.
"We need the C-130 because we can use that not only to bring troops, but also to use it for humanitarian missions. We are ready to buy but we are still in discussions with the seller."
Operating costs
Indonesia set aside 42 trillion rupiah (Dh17 billion) in 2010 for defence spending, but most would be spent on operating expenditures of its 550,000 strong military force.
The country plans to boost its defence spending up to 1.5 per cent of the country's gross domestic product by 2014 from about 0.7-0.8 per cent in 2010, among the lowest in the region.
