For decades, the Philippine Air Force hunted communist rebels and Islamist militants in the country’s forests and southern islands.
Now, amid seemingly intractable tensions in the South China Sea, it is being reshaped into an armed service meant to defend one of Asia’s most contested maritime frontiers – even as analysts rank it the weakest air arm among Southeast Asia’s six largest militaries.
“Because we are an archipelago, we really need to strengthen our air assets,” air force spokeswoman Colonel Maria Christina Basco said on Friday, as quoted by local media. “This means a 360 degree defence of the Philippines.”
Since 2013, when the Philippine military’s modernisation programme entered its first phase, known as Horizon 1, the air force has steadily rebuilt basic capabilities lost to years of underinvestment.
Newer platforms had expanded the air force’s operational range and improved interoperability with allies, said Vincent Kyle Parada, a former defence analyst for the Philippine Navy and a lecturer at De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde.
This was “crucial” for the air force to move on from “internal security operations towards a more active role in territorial defence and deterrence in the South China Sea”, he said.