We acquired the S211s from the manufacturers directly, as part of a counter trade deal. Singapore was not involved in that transaction. Our S211s are new; some were even assembled in the Philippines.
I confirm. The S211 came directly from the factory north-west of Milan in Italy. Btw buying the MB339s would have been better in terms of return on investment (payload, range, sensors, lead-in trainer role if one day you do get the Singapore modernized F5s with Grifo, etc). If the NZ still have them in storage, their MB339K are really good and relatively cheap to maintain.
Yup. This was big news when it came out, and I still have my news clippings. The articles even detailed how the counter-trade deal involved a number of Philippine products and included, among other things, women's underwear.
(I'm just saying what I read in the news gents . . . am not joking).Quite a number of my countrymen, who know a thing or two about defense matters, agree with your assessment. There were actually allegations of back-door deals when the PAF decided to get the S211.
A number of the reactivated S211s are actually being converted to Close Air Support config. The Western Command of the AFP also uses S211s for low altitude photo recon missions in the Spratlys.
Pucaras have turbopropellers only don't they ? If I am right you can't really compare them to jets such as the S211 ?
I know somebody from Aermacchi (who took over Siai Marchetti ages ago) and I lived in Milan for a long while.Yup. This was big news when it came out, and I still have my news clippings. The articles even detailed how the counter-trade deal involved a number of Philippine products and included, among other things, women's underwear.
BTW, contedicavour, how did you verify this?
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I have to disagree with that, based on my calculations, the Philippine military has been underinvested relative to other areas, such as education and infrastructure such as roads, as poor as the state of the Philippine education system is relative to the rest of the world, and as inadequate as our infrastructure is, those areas of government are actully in better shape relative to the acceptable world standard, compared to our military, for example, in the case of our roads, our main cities are connected by largely paved highways, and we have four lane expressways connecting at least part of Luzon, now relative to the rest of the world, our roads are not a third world nightmare, if the state of our military is compared to these areas, you can see that the Philippine military is even worse off compared to the rest of the world than our education system or our infrastructure is, which leads to my impression that as underinvested as the Philippines is on social services, the defense sector is even more underinvested, if the state of our roads is comparable to our military, we would not even have a paved road running from Manila to Baguio or Loag, nevermind having a four lane expressway such as the North and the South Luzon expressways, the the Southern Luzon Arterial Road, this is the reason why I think the Philippine government needs to invest more money for the military, at around 2 to 2.3 per cent of GDP, or around 130 billion pesos for 2007, because as bad as the condition of our government sectors is relative to the rest of the world, the state of our military is even more pitifull, even if the other departments concerning social services are cash strapped, they still have it good relative to out armed forces.
Let us not kid ourselves. We are not at the level of African countries -- but we are nowhere where we ought to be given our country's age.
There is more to modernization than acquiring weapons. The AFP must bring itself up to level where it can be modernized -- before it begins with actual modernization.
Deterrence does not require a country to completely match the full range of capabilities of the aggressor. The point is make a military option so prohibitively expensive -- in terms of casualties, materiel, and political currency -- that the aggressor would not even try it.
We are taking advantage of this.
Our communists, formally called the "National Democratic Front" have adopted a two pronged approach to attempting to overthrow the Philippine government: by military means, and by parliamentary methods.
We are fighting a four-front insurgency. Pick one.
Why doesn't Europe hand over its spare multi-million fighters? Subic and other bases weren't "closed". The Filipinos kicked us out during a Political wave of anti-Americanism in the early '90s. Remember Cory Aquino and her "people power"? I think Clark was wrecked by a volcano and Subic ended up being looted and destroyed by Filipinos. Since then they have had successive Governments who's cronies have continued looting the country and driving it to an economic morass, "and they dont even have America to blame anymore".
There are no free lunches. The US, or any other country, will only give away stuff if there is a return on investment. Think about it, Israel gets billions in aid -- even if they don't really need it. Its America's way of cozying up to countries.
Correction. Local Filipinos protected Subic and kept it intact. The local mayor, who then became administrator of the Subic Free Port made sure of that -- along with scores of local volunteers who understood that it was in their city's best interest to keep Subic the way it was. It is now a very profitable export processing zone. Its one of the economic engines of central Luzon.
Both Chinese as well as AMERICAN influence abound in the Philippines. Countries with money will always exert influence on those that don't.
We definitely share your concerns Tas.