SINGAPORE - The Singapore Armed Forces SAF has convened a high level assessment of the risks involved in parachute jumps after a Red Lions team member had a rough landing at the National Day ParadeNational Day Parade.
Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen said on Saturday August 13 that the SAF wanted to look comprehensively, not only at the incident involving Third Warrant Officer 3 WO Jeffrey Heng, but also the past National Day parades and previews.
SAF wanted to see if there were structural changes that increased the risk, said Dr Ng.
The SAF has gone through a lot of data from the National Environment Agency, including wind speeds on the day of performances and engineering involved, according to Dr Ng.
The interim assessment is that mitigation measures are needed, which the SAF is putting in place, according to Dr Ng, who gave the update at a National Day event in Toa Payoh Central.
We take these risks very seriously. He said that if the conditions for parachuting are not safe for any particular day, there should be a trigger to declare it to be unsafe.
The jump would be cancelled under current standard operating procedures, if clouds prevent parachutists from seeing the landing site, said Dr Ng.
He added that we need to add in conditions at the performance site.
Dr Ng said that the interim report suggested the need for a different descent path to give the parachutists more reaction time.
He added: These are technicalities that the experts must look into, and then they must validate it and they must practise it so we should leave it to the experts.