By Galen Yeo, published in Today, 3 July.

As a Singaporean, I am less concerned about the ongoing discussions of who serves national service. I am far more concerned about the institution of National Service (NS) itself.

Most people I know have never seen NS as a productive use of a person's time. But the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) - or any army anywhere - has never had the need to address this issue.

Even today, NS is still regarded as a necessary evil. No one disagrees about the necessity of Total Defence, but people wonder how their sons will positively benefit from it.

Traditionally, conscription has never been about improving the individual. It has always been about serving the nation in an absolute fashion.

But can this process be fine-tuned in Singapore?

The real challenge for Singapore is not merely holding up the need for NS. It is in balancing our defence needs with the competitive demands of a global world.

To address this, NS needs to be a more well-rounded experience for the individual.It

needs to specifically develop people not just as conscripted soldiers, but as well-developed individuals ready to face the world once they leave the SAF.

It needs to enable the army experience to be relevant to the real world, and not exist as an entirely separate institution.

The United States Army offers a myriad of educational opportunities for soldiers to upgrade themselves while serving their obligations. I strongly support measures along those lines.

How many hours in a day do we need to run an army? Could time be better managed and organised for NSmen?

Why do NSmen have to take their own initiative to keep themselves upgraded - and why doesn't the SAF recognise this as a real concern and address this?

No one wants to be left out in the real world and the SAF could provide so much more to equip our young men with the skills they need to carry on during their NS experience. (And I'm not talking about training tech-savvy soldiers to operate iPads.)

The SAF is the single biggest developer of people, hence the possibilities for development in areas of education and life training are enormous. It could potentially arm NS men with far more skills than their roles as soldiers.

As an employer, I would like to get excited about hiring someone who has completed NS, instead of staring at the rift in his education and development.

Our guys already have to play catch-up with everyone else, so why not enable them to close the gap while in NS - instead of widening it because of NS. The two goals of development and running an army do not have to be exclusive of each other.

The entire paradigm of NS has been shaped from the top and it has been our sacred cow.

But external realities of our global world suggest that Singapore has to do more - and NS presents the perfect opportunity to empower Singaporeans at a ripe age.

I suppose my time in NS has made me more acutely aware of the issues that surround it. Reading this letter this morning (in the print edition) led me to think, "wow, this guy really does get it", and he bothers to speak up about it.

"Traditionally, conscription has never been about improving the individual. It has always been about serving the nation in an absolute fashion."

I've always been rather bitter about the fact that two (long) years of my life would be spent doing something that I had little interest in - in essence, it would be a waste of my time. But as Mr Yeo has put it, it is an opportunity cost whose incursion is not unmerited, albeit it is one that I would rather not have to bear.

While there are exceptions where the military does invest into the development of its staff (like courses for regulars, medical training for medics etc.), Mr Yeo's view remains quite accurate, especially for the bulk of those posted to units. For many, the only learning point they gain in the course of their service is how to make the best of the (often less than optimistic) situation they are in - sometimes with rather hilarious, jeopardous or even morally questionable methods.

The military is said, in Singaporean society to be a glue that bonds people from all walks of life. But social divisions still exists (social inequality is one such reason), and tempers still flare as a result of that. Two years is not a short duration, and it can be used to address one of the chief causes of social inequality - education. That is the key to empowering individuals, that is the key to surviving in the challenging world that lay ahead of one's youth.

"But external realities of our global world suggest that Singapore has to do more - and NS presents the perfect opportunity to empower Singaporeans at a ripe age."

It would be interesting to see how the SAF would respond to Mr Yeo's letter, on whether they would diverge from their template responses.