Aquino vows a robust Air Force before 2016

President Aquino FILE PHOTO

AIR FORCE CITY, Philippines – President Benigno Aquino III on Monday vowed to acquire modern aircraft and other air defense equipment before his term ends in 2016 in the face of a territorial dispute with China.

In his speech during the 66th anniversary rites of the Philippine Air Force at Clark Air Base, Pampanga, Aquino enumerated some aircraft types that would replace the country’s aging air force fleet.

“Asahan po ninyo bago tayo bumaba sa pwesto, tumatanod na sa ating himpapawid ang mga makabago’t modernong kagamitan gaya ng lead-in fighters, long-range patrol aircraft, close air support aircraft, light-lift fixed-wing aircraft, medium-lift aircraft, attack helicopters, combat utility helicopters, air defense radars, at flight simulators,” Aquino said.

(Before I step down, brand-new aircraft – such as lead-in fighters, long-range patrol aircraft, close air support aircraft, light-lift fixed-wing aircraft, medium-lift aircraft, attack helicopters, combat utility helicopters, air defense radars, and flight simulators – will be flying and safeguarding our airspace.)

With the joint efforts of government agencies to modernize the Armed Forces, he said PAF will soar high in the service of the country.

These new aircraft, said Aquino, will be bought using a portion of the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ P75-billion modernization funds.

The Philippine military is among the most poorly equipped in Asia, with some of its modernization efforts only consisted of surplus hardware from its ally, the United States. For the Air Force, it recently bought eight new Sokol multi-role helicopters from Poland which arrived last year.

The Air Force was one of the best in the region in the 1960s, Aquino recalled. It sent its contingent to help in the Congo crisis as part of the United Nations in 1963, and to also help out in Bali when Mt. Gunung Agung erupted also in the same year.

And then as years went by its squadrons of air assets became obsolete without being replaced, and Aquino blamed past administrations for neglecting the air force and other branches of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

Only last week, an OV-10 Bronco plane of the Air Force went missing in Palawan after a proficiency flight and two of its pilots remain missing. Aquino said this should not happen again.

Eight OV-10 units were all grounded after the incident.

“Sa tuwing lumilipad ang Air Force, nakataya sa kalidad ng ating mga eroplano, hindi lamang ang tagumpay ng kanilang misyon, kundi ang mismong buhay ng ating mga sundalo. Kamakailan lang, bumagsak ang OV-10 630 Bronco lulan ang dalawa sa ating mga kawal. Kasalukuyan pa rin pong nagaganap ang search and retrieval operations, at makakaasa po ang pamilya ng mga piloto sa karampatang tulong at suporta ng inyo pong gobyerno,” he said.

(Every time a PAF plane goes up in the air, the integrity of the plane, the mission and the lives of the pilots are on the line. Recently an OV-10 630 Bronco flown by two airmen crashed. Search and rescue operations are still ongoing and the families of the two pilots are assured of adequate government support.)

Aquino gave no details of the aircraft and equipment, or the terms for their acquisition.

In January an Aquino spokesman announced the government would buy 12 South Korean FA-50 fighter jets to be used for “training, interdiction and disaster response”.

The Philippines, a former US colony, retired the last of its US-designed F-5 fighters in 2005 and lacks air defense.

Aquino, whose-six-year term ends in mid-2016, has set about modernizing the military in his first three years in office as tensions rise with China on overlapping territorial claims to islands and waters in the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea.)

The main focus was initially the navy with the acquisition of two Hamilton-class cutters decommissioned by the US Coast Guard.

The first of the two refurbished vessels became the Philippine Navy’s flagship in 2011, replacing a warship initially built for the US Navy in World War II.

The second cutter is set to arrive in the Philippines later this year.

Aquino said he was committed to reversing the under-spending on military capability that he said had characterized the Philippines since the early 1990s.

“Over the past decades the air force had its wings broken and we relied on old and rickety planes and equipment,” he said.

Congress has since authorized the defense department to spend P75 billion ($1.7 billion) on modernizing the military over the next five years, Aquino added.

This is on top the more than P19 billion that it had spent over the past three years for this purpose.

Between 1992 and 2010, the Philippines had spent just P33 billion for military modernization, Aquino said.

Vice President Jejomar Binay, Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin, AFP Chief General Emmanuel Bautista and Lieutenant General Lauro Catalino dela Cruz were also present at the PAF event.

As part of the program, 66 aircraft of the Air Force mounted the sky for a flyby. The aircraft were F-27, Sokol, MG 520, UH-1H, C-130, S-211, SF-260 and T-41-D. With a report from Agence France Presse