The long overdue completion of the modernization program of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) finds the military in quandary today without a single jet fighter to protect the country’s airspace and an antiquated navy unable to secure the nation’s vast territorial waters.Read more »
Military officials interviewed by the Philippines News Agency expressed dismay over the predicament of the AFP with virtually no external defense to speak of No Fighter Jet To Protect PH at present, a far cry from the days of old when the Philippine Air Force (PAF) and the Philippine Navy (PN) were second to none in Asia, except Japan at the end of World War II until the 1970s.
At present, Philippine airspace is vulnerable to intrusion as the Air Force, the nation’s first line of defense, has no fighter jets in its arsenal to intercept hostile aircraft entering into the country's airspace after the PAF decommissioned its aging F-5 interceptors in 2005.
The PAF has to be content with its few remaining S-211 jet trainers as “substitute interceptors” which cannot be compared to the supersonic fighter planes such as the F-22 “Raptor” F-14 Phantom; F-15 “Eagle”; F-16 “Falcon”; F-18 “Hornet”; Mig-29 Tornado GR4; Mi¬rage 2000 Sokhoi S-37, and the F-21 Kfir.
The failure of the AFP to modernize the Air Force and Navy is now be¬ing felt with the intrusion of Chinese fishing vessels at Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal which is within the Philippines’ territorial waters but claimed by the Chinese as theirs.
Friday, May 11, 2012
When is an air force not an air force
When it does not have a single fighter plane:
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