Not only that. If it comes to a war of attrition, Malaysia has a disadvantage against most of our neighbours and especially against the guy we are facing in SCS right now. Personally, I believe our best bet is to go for quality (in hardware, personnel, training, etc.).

Should a real hot war happens, it does not matter how much resources we have (which I disagree, most of our neighbours and the guy in SCS has same or even more) or trade routes or material assistance we get from outsiders (which I also disagree, depending on who we are fighting and whats the cause, those outsiders might not want to assist us also because a) they might not agree with our cause, b) they might also be on friendly terms with our enemy country or c) just don't want to get involved - like how we don't really want to get involve with Philippines tit-for-tat with China even though theoretically we are facing same issue) because in a war of attrition 1 Malaysian lost in combat is much higher in relative 'cost' to one Thai, one Indonesian or 1 Chinese as we have far less population and hence able-bodied men for war.

A war of attrition you are proposing is what the Russians did in WW2 and they lost 8-14 million or the Vietnamese did against the US where they lost half a million combatants (these does not count civilian casualties).

Anyway, I will not want to propose that we base our national military strategy on getting our pilots into 2nd-rate or less advanced fighters to fight for our country so that even if lose 50% of our men we reach our objective.