Philippine Defense Forces

[Lilyr]

Originally Posted by Nabartek

PH wants more of shrinking US military aid

Ang bobo talaga nila. Don't they read current events? Don't they know what the US has to stand for (despite its faults)? Ano yan, sabihin na lang ng iba nagpapa espesyal ensaymada ang Pinas? Take note that Beijing (and other coutnries) are currently riled up over the US insistence on human rights. Lalo na lang nilang sasabihin na US puppet ang Pinas.

[AmbutLang]

check this video

http://english.ntdtv.com/ntdtv_en/ne...#video_section

[Nabartek]

Eto pala ibig sabihin ng NTDTV

New Tang Dynasty Television

[Lilyr]

Del Rosario hinted not too subtly that it was in America’s interest to help the Philippines – one of only two treaty allies in the region.

“The rise of new powers has also added a new dimension to the geopolitics of Asia and the Pacific. For many years, the US has enjoyed uncontested leadership in the region, and has guaranteed the international system that has engendered the conditions for economic growth and development,” Del Rosario said...

More beggar mentality...
Too bad for Del Rosario. With the current strains in China-US ties, it is imperative that the US treads cautiously (albeit with a back up plan). Besides, I believe they have gotten smart when it comes to PH begging tactics. I was rewatching Cory's speech before Congress yesterday. I was amazed at the briliance. Not just in speech but in content. Todo boot-licking talaga. Which is why they approved aid package right away. Only to have it reduced later after US leaders realised, "we can't set a precedent of someone making a moving speech and getting much aid"

US doesn't wear their hearts on their sleeves and pretend to work most of the time.
The PH does it in reverse

[Tan Tararan]

Originally Posted by Bahay_Kubo

i posted this on the Timawa forum:



kailangan natin tumayo sa sarili nating mga paa. do not limit ourselves to getting American-made weapons and equipment. matuto din tayong mag-develop ng sariling atin. BE LIKE ISRAEL.

Exactly.

Buti pa ang mga taong wala sa posisyon naiisip 'tong mga ganitong bagay.
Kelan kaya maiisip ng mga taga AFP, DND 'to?
Mukha yatang iba ang nasa isip nila sa ngayon...

[Nabartek]

What do you think?

Voice of Chinese-Filipinos needed to settle disputes with China

If I were capable of subduing China, had extra powers and a strong army, I would do everything in my power to drive away the Chinese who keep on bullying the Philippines. I would do that for my country and for the future of my countrymen.

You may think that I may be out of my mind, crazy even, but it is how I feel, and how I love being a Filipino living in democratic Philippines. This same feeling should be shared by all Filipinos now, for the Chinese government is now trampling on our territorial rights. Therefore, our government should do everything to protect and preserve our rights.

I likewise call on all Chinese residing in the Philippines and the Tsinoys (Filipinos with Chinese lineage) to join us and ask their mother country to resolve the issue once and for all. We have treated our Chinese compatriots with love and respect, and they have been part of our culture, our lives—our ties and roots going back to centuries.

There are many Tsinoys from Filipino-Chinese intermarriages. Many of them are productive citizens and decent people, and successful businessmen, politicians and doctors.

Let’s bring back our good and friendly relations with China. What is presently happening is not good for all of us—Filipinos or Chinese.

—ANITA B. SONTI,

anitasonti@yahoo.com.ph

[Nabartek]

sana may lumubog sa mga banca nila soon sa sobrang dami nila

Chinese boats crowding shoal

MANILA, Philippines - Fourteen Chinese vessels and fishing boats were monitored in Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal on Tuesday night, the military said yesterday.

Armed Forces Northern Luzon Command spokesman Capt. Aurelio Kigis said seven Chinese fishing vessels, three fishing boats, three maritime surveillance vessels and a fisheries and law enforcement vessel were sighted inside the shoal as of 8 p.m.

“The continuing monitoring being undertaken by the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines)… is meant to protect (the country’s) territorial integrity,” he said.

Kigis said Chinese Maritime Surveillance (CMS) vessel 71 was located 13.6 nautical miles away from Philippine Coast Guard ship BRP Edsa 2.

CMS 75 is 3.3 nautical miles away from Edsa 2, while the distance between CMS 81 and the Philippine ship is 11.9 nautical miles, he added.

Kigis could not tell whether Filipino fishing boats have remained in the area.

Last Sunday, Armed Forces Northern Luzon Command chief Lt. Gen. Anthony Alcantara said six local fishing boats had entered the shoal.

“Our Coast Guard is ready to protect the interest of our fishermen in that area,” he said.

Edsa 2 and the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources vessel MCS 3008 are continuously monitoring the situation.

Panatag Shoal is 124 nautical miles from the nearest base point in Zambales.

The area is within the Philippines’ 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone based on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The standoff with the Chinese began on April 10 when Chinese surveillance ships placed themselves between the BRP Gregorio del Pilar and Chinese fishing vessels, preventing the Philippine Navy from arresting the fishermen, who were found with illegally harvested corals and other endangered marine products.

The Philippines protested the Chinese vessels’ action but China insisted that it has sovereignty over the area.

The eight vessels eventually left the area, bringing with them their illegal catch.

China has rejected a Philippine invitation to bring the dispute before an international body.

[Bahay_Kubo]

Originally Posted by Tan Tararan

Exactly.

Buti pa ang mga taong wala sa posisyon naiisip 'tong mga ganitong bagay.
Kelan kaya maiisip ng mga taga AFP, DND 'to?
Mukha yatang iba ang nasa isip nila sa ngayon...

the US is not our pnly possible source of weapons and equipment that can boost our defenses.

we can get stuff from France, Germany, the UK, Spain, Italy, Israel, South Korea, Australia, India, Brazil, Ukraine and Russia if we want to. we can also develop our own weapons and equipment but given our situation now, we must do it in conjunction with a well-established counterpart.

everything can be done to boost our defenses... IF WE WANT TO.

[absinthe_888]

Originally Posted by jpdm

Now, its time for our government to wake up to reality. Speed up the modernization of our AFP and start working with other nations especially in Asia with similarly bullied by China.

Dapat kasi yung mga major media networks natin wag ng ibalita yung pagrrally ng mga militanteng grupo na shempre ayaw na gumanda at lumakas ang AFP.

[3cr]

Chen, China and America
The Economist
http://www.economist.com/node/21554247

AT RARE moments the future of a nation, even one teeming with 1.3 billion souls, can be bound up in the fate of a single person. Just possibly China is living through one of those moments and Chen Guangcheng is that person. A blind activist from Shandong province, Mr Chen emerged from poverty, fought for justice and paid the price with his own liberty. Last month he made a bid for freedom and became ensnared in the impersonal machinery of superpower politics. What now befalls him and his family raises questions about Sino-American relations and the character of Chinese power.

In many ways, Mr Chen is the best of modern China. Blind since childhood, poorly educated until adulthood and then self-taught, he became a lawyer, never a safe career in a country where might is right. As a peasant activist fighting local battles—which makes him a much more potent force in China than politicised members of the urban elite such as the artist Ai Weiwei (see article)—he was praised for years by the local government for advocating the rights of disabled people. Then he crossed the line by taking on the local party over the abortions and sterilisations it enforced as part of China’s strict one-child policy. After four years in jail on spurious charges, Mr Chen was kept prisoner in his own home for 19 months.

On April 22nd he fled to the American embassy in Beijing, where Hillary Clinton, America’s secretary of state, was due to arrive for her country’s annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue with China. What happened next is disputed (see article). American diplomats say they became close to Mr Chen, even holding his hand when they spoke. They say that, after six days inside, Mr Chen willingly left the embassy for hospital, accompanied by the ambassador, to be reunited with his family. He had received assurances from the Chinese government that he would be treated well and allowed to study law at university. However, from his hospital bed, a weary, browbeaten Mr Chen suddenly began to complain that American diplomats had “lobbied” him to leave, that they had not let him confer with his friends and that Chinese officials had threatened his wife. He was “very disappointed” in the American government and said he wanted to leave China. For their part, Chinese officials acknowledge no deal—but they have sternly demanded an apology from America.

The Beijing switch

With luck the dispute will calm down. Perhaps Mr Chen will be spirited away to America, or find a way to live normally in China. But the incident raises three questions. Most immediately, did America’s best diplomats let a brave man down? With Mr Chen out of their care, they now have little bargaining power. If they were duped by their Chinese counterparts, or too ready to accept their assurances, they will be taken as fools. If they struck a deal in haste, calculating that currencies and tariffs should eclipse the rights of an inconvenient blind man, they will be taken as knaves. Mrs Clinton boasted that Mr Chen left the embassy “in a way that reflected his choices and our values”. Her words will undoubtedly be scrutinised in this year’s election.

Yet the plight of Mr Chen raises two deeper questions about his own country. The first is whether China still feels it must put its relations with America before anything else. In past disputes, notably the aerial collision of a Chinese fighter and an American spyplane in 2001, China has tended eventually to put America first—as the source of trade and wealth and the policeman for the global commons. But China is stronger now, its economy is bigger, it can defend its own shores and it expects to carry weight in the world—especially as, in the view of some triumphalists in Beijing, America has been dragged down by the financial crash and its vicious partisan politics.

If Mr Chen is now punished and Barack Obama is humiliated, that will signal a troubling shift in the terms of the superpowers’ relations. A wounded, suspicious America and a rampant China, bent on winning the respect it thinks its due, set the stage for dysfunction at best and conflict at worst. It would be a terrible outcome for both superpowers and for the world. They should strive to patch things up.

The power shift

The other question—and one that will preoccupy China in a year when power shifts to the next generation of leaders—is how the country is run. The blind lawyer in dark glasses is just one of millions of ordinary people smarting under arbitrary rule. For a long time—first when China shed Maoism and then as its economy surged—most Chinese people cared less about the niceties of the law than their fast-rising living standards. Even then the weak, the disabled, the unemployed and the poor were ignored, sidelined and sometimes trampled in the rush for wealth. Now, a slowing economy, corruption, rural anger and urban freedoms all mean that the party is under pressure to enforce the rule of law—especially in order to curtail the impunity of local officials.

The Communist Party recognises that it must start to be more accountable and give people a legal outlet for their grievances. Faced with an insurrection in Wukan, after villagers protested about local officials’ profiteering from the sale of land, Beijing ended up siding with the villagers. The party has been keen to depict the sacking of Bo Xilai, who ran the south-western region of Chongqing, as proof that China is a country of laws. Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, has argued that corruption will not be tolerated. Try as it might, the party cannot altogether control the country’s 250m microbloggers who follow each drama live and continue to confound the censors.

The dilemma is that although the party needs the law to govern, it cannot submit to the law without losing power and giving up privileges. At the moment the party still wants to have it both ways. More than any other incident so far, the disturbing case of Mr Chen raises doubts about whether it can. It is a heavy burden to be resting on the frail shoulders of a man lying in a Beijing hospital bed as the diplomats and politicians dine together a few blocks away. But it matters enormously to China’s future.



_____________________________



US legal experts helping PH bring Scarborough row before int'l tribunal
03-May-12, 2:56 PM | Chichi Conde, InterAksyon.com
http://www.interaksyon.com/article/3...-intl-tribunal

MANILA, Philippines -- Legal experts from the United States are helping the Philippines in its efforts to bring the standoff with China over Scarborough (Panatag) Shoal, President Benigno Aquino III said on Thursday.

"We have a very, very strong case," Aquino said.

He said the government is looking at all possible means to raise the matter unilaterally before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.

Aquino said the American lawyers, who Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario met in his recent trip to Washington, presented "two specific sets of recommendations."

Earlier, Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman Raul Hernandez said the country can unilaterally raise its claim over Scarborough Shoal, which is also known as Bajo de Masinloc, before the ITLOS if Beijing refuses to accept Manila's invitation for arbitration.

Hernandez, however, said a unilateral action would only result in a validation of Philippine sovereignty, not a ruling on the territorial dispute.

"If we go to ITLOS unilaterally, it will not be for an arbitration. It will be more for the validation of our sovereign rights," he said.

ITLOS is an independent judicial body established by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to adjudicate disputes arising from the interpretation and application of maritime laws and agreements.

The tribunal, however, requires the concurrence of the parties in a dispute before it can begin arbitration.

[amigo32]

China is also selling equipments

[jpdm]

Pursue this strongly, with the US begging campaign of our government went kaput.Dito tayo umasa. Malakas laban natin.

In military terms, we are dead.

Del Rosario said he raised this issue during a meeting with State Department Asst. Secretary Andrew Shapiro of the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs that drew an assurance that the US would double the initial $15 million FY 2012 FMF allocation for the Philippines to $30 million.

US military aid has gone to, among others, acquiring the Philippine Navy flagship BRP Gregorio del Pilar; procuring a C-130 cargo plane for the Philippine Air Force as well as overhauling the engines of MG-520 Defender helicopter gunships; night vision goggles and Humvees for the Philippine Army.

Puro barya at antigong mga gamit.

Philippines strategic ally of the US?

[jpdm]

Originally Posted by amigo32

China is also selling equipments

Your point?

Anyway, good news?

Soon-to-arrive Hamilton cutter more capable -- DND


http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dBWfWRUa9W...Dallas_USN.jpg

MANILA — Department of National Defense (DND) Spokesperson Peter Paul Galvez said on Thursday the country's newest Hamilton-class cutter, which is expected to arrive before the end of the second quarter, is more capable than its predecessor, the former "USS Hamilton" which is now commissioned and in service as the Philippine Navy's "BRP Gregorio Del Pilar."

"The newest Hamilton-class cutter to enter is the 'USS Dallas.' It would be more capable than its predecessor," Galvez said during the "Talking Points" program over DZRB Radyo ng Bayan at the Philippine Information Agency (PIA) Bldg. in Quezon City.

The DND spokesperson declined to comment on how capable the new ship would be, but he stressed that it would be good for the naval service in general.

Sources said that "USS Dallas" could be coming in the Philippines with all her equipment and armaments, unlike the "BRP Gregorio Del Pilar" which arrived in the country minus her Phalanx close-in weapon systems, 25mm Bushmaster cannons, and sonar systems.

"USS Dallas," the next frigate for the PN, will be indeed more capable in protecting the country's maritime territory from encroachment, the sources added. (PNA)

(ZamboTimes)

[amigo32]

Originally Posted by jpdm

Your point?

ano ka ba, ang hina mo ngayon, doon tayo bumili mas mura kesa iba sabay gamitin mo sa kanila

[jpdm]

Originally Posted by amigo32

ano ka ba, ang hina mo ngayon, doon tayo bumili mas mura kesa iba sabay gamitin mo sa kanila

Noted.

Anyway, habang nagbobote garapa at namamalimos tayo sa Amerika, eto ginagawa ng Vietnam..



http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tedkQ3iTWz...%2BRakshak.jpg
Brahmos air launched version (photo : Bharat Rakshak)

India to Sell BrahMos Missile to Vietnam


20 September 2011



The BrahMos Aerospace —the Indo-Russian joint venture that has developed the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile — is keen to sell the missile to Vietnam with which India is developing a strong strategic relationship, sources have confirmed.

However, the Indian government’s approval will have to be taken for any such acquisition. Sources also confirmed that Vietnam is already on a list of about 15 “friendly countries” — that was decided by a joint Indo-Russian supervisory council — to whom the BrahMos missile can be sold.

“Informal talks are on but no concrete proposal has been made as yet,” a source who did not want to be identified, told this newspaper. “Any acquisition of the BrahMos missile will be of immense value to Vietnam and will boost its defence preparedness,” sources said.

So far, the BrahMos missile has not been sold to any third country although a few have already evinced interest in acquiring it.

In a move that signalled the importance of strategic ties between India and Vietnam in the wake of increased Chinese military assertion in Asia, defence secretary Shashi Kant Sharma had also recently begun an official visit to Vietnam. India is set to offer naval facilities for training and capacity building to Vietnam.

(Deccan Chronicle)
Diposkan oleh NurW di 10:41

[ManilaBoy45]

The Phalanx CIWS has already been removed from the Dallas so don't even dream about it and there are no sonar systems on these class ships anymore as they were all strip back in the 90's... Looks like the only thing new will be the AN/SPS-40 long range air search radar ...

[davidheathe]

it's very easy to start a noynoy bashing in this forum where most are faceless individuals. matagal ng problema yang makalumang gamit ng AFP. hindi lang naman nagsimula sa time ni pnoy yan. panahon pa ni ramos, erap, at ni gma alam din nila yan. kung may mabuting nadulot ung gusot sa scarborough siguro ung natawag niya ung attention ng mga pilipino.

dun sa mga humuhusga na parang namamalimos ang pinas sa US, siguro instead na magbunganga tayo, we should see what this current government is doing. hindi naman tanga ung mga tao diyan alam nila yan. pero sa ngayon no choice sila eh. i think kapit muna sa US for now while we slowly build our navy.

nakakafrustrate lang kasi mga tao, puro puna. sana sa bawat puna may iooffer kang alternative. kung wala kang maiisip na ibang suhestiyon, makakbuti siguro na manahimik na lang.

[Christian_123]

Originally Posted by amigo32

China is also selling equipments

Interesting plan:
1: Buy armaments from the PLA.
2: Dont remove the PLA markings and insignia on the armaments.
3: Sabotage their navy with their own weapons...

[amigo32]

hahaha, anong tawag doon? hindi ba palimos yun, sige humingi na lang ng tulong, mas maganda sa tenga

[kenken94]

Naku, Indonesian made navy ships nalang. Mas kalidad pa yun kesa gawang chekwa.

Baka bago pa dumating sa battle area sumabog na ang barkong biling China.