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2 Philippines builds anti-China
muscle By George Amurao
When expectant observers failed to hear
the familiar whup-whup sound of the Bell UH-1
Iroquois or "Huey" helicopter, the new sound of
rotors slicing the air at the former Clark Air
Base heralded the arrival of the Philippine Air
Force's new armed light utility helicopter, the
Sokol W3A.
Its acquisition is part of the
government's military modernization plan that aims
to purchase both refurbished and new aircraft,
ships, vehicles and other weapons both for
internal security and a subsequent transition to
external defense. While the delivery of the Sokols
are nominally part of the armed forces'
counter-insurgency/internal security operations
procurement package, the armed helicopters land at
a time that the Philippines is jousting
with China over contested
maritime territories in the South China Sea.
Four of the eight Sokols arrived at
Villamor Air Base this month from the helicopter
company's factory in Poland. The eight Sokol
(Polish for "Falcon") light utility helicopters,
which were purchased for 2.8 billion pesos
(US$64.4 million) from Polish company PZL Swidnik,
can mount an M60 machine gun on each side, come
equipped with night vision devices and unlike the
older Hueys can transport 10 rather than seven
passengers.
The helicopters have a maximum
airspeed of 140.5 knots, a range of 402 nautical
miles and can stay aloft for three consecutive
hours. The remaining four birds are scheduled for
delivery in the latter part of 2012.
The
procurement is part of the government's
three-phase, five billion peso per year Capability
Upgrade Program, or CUP. Defense Secretary
Voltaire Gazmin has expressed second-phase plans
to purchase six jet trainers for the Lead-In
Fighter Trainer (LIFT) program that can also be
configured for air-to-air and ground attack roles.
With a proposed budget of 1 billion pesos each,
Gazmin said the government is weighing potential
suppliers, including the Korea Aerospace
Industries (KAI) T/A-50 Golden Eagle and Alenia
Aermacchi M-346.
The Philippine Air Force
(PAF) said the procurement of LIFT planes is a
logical next step in preparing Filipino pilots to
fly more advanced fighter and attack aircraft.
"You can't build a fighter capability overnight,"
a PAF source was quoted saying in local media.
The Department of Defense (DoD),
meanwhile, said in a January statement that it is
studying the feasibility of procuring anti-ship
missiles to bolster the country's maritime
security, which currently badly lags China's
capability and firepower. The Philippine Navy, on
the other hand, is working on the acquisition of a
2 billion peso multi-role vessel that can be used
for military transport and disaster response,
according to navy chief Vice Admiral Alexander
Pama.
Under CUP's first phase, the navy's
three Jacinto class patrol vessels (formerly
Peacock class ships from the United Kingdom)
underwent upgrades of their command and control
systems and installed new M242 Bushmaster 25 mm
cannons. Further upgrades and overhaul of the
machinery are also underway. Two Patrol Killer
Medium class boats (PKM or Chamsuri class) were
also acquired from South Korea in 2006, bringing
its fleet of the said boats to seven.
Power projection While Manila
gears up the second phase of its military
modernization plan, future procurements are
expected to boost the Philippines' ability to
project power in relation to its territorial
dispute with China over the mineral-rich Spratly
Islands.
The group of reefs and islets in
the South China Sea (the Philippine government
since last year officially refers to this body of
water as the West Philippine Sea) has a host of
claimants among neighboring countries in Southeast
Asia, including Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and
Brunei, along with Taiwan and China.
Whereas the other countries lay claim only
to a handful of the reefs or islets, China claims
the entire Spratly Island group as its territory.
The first major Philippine-China row over the
islands occurred in 1995 when China occupied
Mischief Reef (which the Philippines refers to as
Panganiban Reef) located 200 kilometers off the
western coast of Palawan, well within the
Philippines' Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
Subsequent years have seen a series of
minor encounters involving fishermen caught
poaching in the disputed waters. Tensions
ratcheted last year with several incidents of
Chinese naval ships harassing oil exploration and
fishing vessels in areas claimed by Philippines,
triggering a flurry of diplomatic protests.
Beyond issuing diplomatic protests and
leaning on its long-time ally the United States
for support, the Armed Forces of the Philippines
(AFP) lags China's power projection capabilities.
The Philippine Navy is comparatively feeble and
until August 2011 still had a World War II-era
destroyer escort as its flagship. It cannot
project airpower beyond several jet trainers
configured as light fighters and small observation
planes converted for light attack roles.
As the new Sokols are geared for armed
troop transport with slightly more powerful
engines than the PAF's workhorse Hueys, defense
analysts do not see the new birds playing a major
role in any armed dispute with China over the
Spratly Islands.
With the external
defense-oriented, phase two of CUP still in its
initial stages, the Philippines' defense
capability over the Spratlys is still weak. But
Manila is clearly now trying to turn crisis into
opportunity, leveraging China's recent aggression
to speed up and pump more funds into its military
modernization plans.
Though President
Benigno Aquino has said on several occasions that
the Philippines will support all efforts,
including those led by the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), to peacefully
resolve the dispute over the Spratlys, his
government has taken several steps to bolster its
military capabilities and forge stronger links
with Washington specifically to counterbalance
China's perceived aggression in the South China
Sea.
Aquino warned China's Defense
Minister Liang Guanglie during the latter's visit
to the Philippines in May 2011 that an increase in
the number of incidents in contested areas of the
Spratlys would lead to a regional arms race. "We
might not have the capabilities now, but [China's
intrusions] might force us to increase our
capabilities also," Aquino told Liang.
Mighty revenues The Spratlys are
believed to straddle untapped rich deposits of oil
and natural gas. The presence of natural gas in
Malampaya, located 80 kilometers off the northwest
coast of Palawan (proximate to but not part of the
Spratlys), was first discovered in 1992. The
Malampaya gas field is now a joint project of the
Philippines' Department of Energy and the Shell
Philippines Exploration BV, and is estimated to
contain 3.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and
85 million barrels of condensate.
In 2001,
the Malampaya Deep Water Gas-to-Power project was
inaugurated, and commercial operations commenced a
year later. Under its joint-venture scheme, 45% of
the stake is owned by Shell Philippines, a Dutch
company, while US company Chevron owns another 45%
stake. The remaining 10% is owned by the
Philippine government under the PNOC Exploration
Corp. The Philippine government has received a
total of 228.5 billion pesos in revenue from the
project since it began commercial operations. In
2011, Manila received $1.1 billion in royalties.
Though the Philippine government receives
only a miniscule 10% of the earnings from the oil
fields, the billions of pesos this translates to
on an annual basis have become a source of funds
for beefing up defense over the islets. The
Department of Energy maintains a special account
in the government's General Account known as Fund
151, which handles the Malampaya project's
revenues. Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said
that all expenses for securing the natural gas
wells will be charged to Fund 151's account.
"It will fund necessary capability
requirements of the AFP in its territorial defense
operations, including providing a strong security
perimeter for the Malampaya natural gas and power
project," Abad said.
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