Saturday, June 16, 2012

Military honors fathers in its ranks, 37 of whom die each year on average

By DJ Yap/ Philippine Daily Inquirer


MANILA, Philippines – Perhaps nobody appreciates better the preciousness of Fathers’ Day than the children of soldiers who know that every moment they stay alive is a blessing.

Some 70,000 fathers comprise over half of the workforce of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, and each year, an average of 37 of the “soldier dads” get killed in action, making military service one of the deadliest jobs for Filipino fathers.
“It’s a hard life to be a soldier and to be the child of a soldier. You have to make every moment count,” said Private First Class Ilyser Infante of the Army’s 82nd Infantry Battalion based in Miag-ao, Iloilo.
The 25-year-old soldier could only wish for more time with his dad.
Four years ago, Infante lost his father, Technical/Sergeant Abraham Infante, to communist New People’s Army guerrillas, who shot and killed him near his home in Moises Padilla town in Negros Occidental. The older Infante was only two years away from retirement when the ambush took place.
Then 21, Infante, who had been unsure of what he wanted to do in life, made a vow to follow in his father’s footsteps and signed up at the Philippine Military Academy, where he lasted only seven months after failing some academic subjects.
“But I was determined to be a soldier so I still enlisted in the Army,” Infante told the Philippine Daily Inquirer on the phone.
His motivation, he said, was not to avenge his father, but to continue what he had started. “At first, there was anger but the longer I am in the service, it just becomes all about wanting to serve my country,” he said.
On the eve of Fathers’ Day on Saturday, the 125,000-strong AFP saluted all the fathers in its ranks.
In a statement given to the Inquirer in lieu of an interview, the military top brass congratulated these fathers “for their continued dedication and commitment to the fulfillment of their mandated duties and responsibilities to the nation while at the same time working very hard to be responsible fathers in their homes.”
“Being a soldier dad is probably the most dangerous and difficult occupation in the world,” AFP spokesman Colonel Arnulfo Marcelo Burgos said.
But “the most challenging thing for a Pinoy soldier dad is striving to be the best father he can be while keeping in mind that his duty and service to the country should always come first,” he added.
The AFP chief of staff,  General Jessie Dellosa, said in the same statement: “I would like to pay tribute to all the Filipino Soldier Dads who guard our skies, patrol our seas and secure our lands so that all the other fathers in the country may be able to celebrate Fathers’ Day with their families peacefully.”
For Infante, Fathers’ Day will be spent quietly at the camp reflecting and remembering the good times with his father, who left behind a wife and five children.
“I will light two candles and remember the kind of father he was to me,” he said, speaking in Filipino.
Infante said the life of a soldier’s son was “completely different” from that of a civilian’s son.
“When your father is a soldier, your time together is so limited. That’s why you just have to make sure that you spend your time together well,” he said.
Recalling his times with his father, Infante said, he would usually have time off only about 10 days in a year.
“Every time he was home, the family would gather together. We would just stay home, talk about a lot of things, laugh together over dinner,” Infante said. “We didn’t go out that often because he would just want to relax and enjoy our company.”
Infante said he has no immediate plans to become a father himself, but when he does, “I will do as my father did.” “I will focus on raising my children and make sure that they finish their studies,” he said.
Stories like Infante’s are not rare in the Philippine military.
Another soldier-son whose father was killed by enemies of the government is the current chief of the Philippine Army, Lieutenant General Emmanuel Bautista.
He was a freshman cadet at the PMA when his father, Brigadier General Teodulfo Bautista, and 33 other unarmed officers and men gathered for a meeting with rebels about a year into a formal ceasefire, were gunned down by Moro National Liberation Front rebels in Patikul, Sulu on Oct. 10, 1977.
Speaking of his desire to achieve lasting peace, Bautista often refers to the experience of his own father.
“We have been fighting for too long. Too many have died. The statistics include my father. How many more will suffer?” Bautista said in an interview with the Inquirer last year. “My own father was killed trying to reach out. If I am able to overcome it, who can contest me?”
Burgos said the AFP strove to honor the memory of the fallen fathers in the ranks through the conferment of posthumous honors to those who were killed in action and providing for the education of their children.
“The Educational Benefit Systems Office of the AFP continues to provide scholarships to dependents of soldiers including those killed in action,” he said.
Currently, there are 4,206 children who have received grants. Of these, 1,896 were the children of soldiers who were killed in action. Some 385 are in elementary school, 525 in high school and 986 in college, Burgos said.
AFP Chief of Staff Dellosa said: “The AFP lauds all FIlipino soldier dads for their unrelenting service and unswerving loyalty to our country.”
“Let us continue to do our utmost best in performing our duties to our nation and our families, keeping alive the Bayanihan spirit as we altogether strive harder to attain a just and lasting peace for our country,” he added.

Monday, June 4, 2012

US Navy hopes stealth ship answers a rising China

By ERIC TALMADGE | Associated Press

SINGAPORE (AP) — A super-stealthy warship that could underpin the U.S. navy's China strategy will be able to sneak up on coastlines virtually undetected and pound targets with electromagnetic "railguns" right out of a sci-fi movie.

But at more than $3 billion a pop, critics say the new DDG-1000 destroyer sucks away funds that could be better used to bolster a thinly stretched conventional fleet. One outspoken admiral in China has scoffed that all it would take to sink the high-tech American ship is an armada of explosive-laden fishing boats.

With the first of the new ships set to be delivered in 2014, the stealth destroyer is being heavily promoted by the Pentagon as the most advanced destroyer in history — a silver bullet of stealth. It has been called a perfect fit for what Washington now considers the most strategically important region in the world — Asia and the Pacific.

Though it could come in handy elsewhere, like in the Gulf region, its ability to carry out missions both on the high seas and in shallows closer to shore is especially important in Asia because of the region's many island nations and China's long Pacific coast.

"With its stealth, incredibly capable sonar system, strike capability and lower manning requirements — this is our future," Adm. Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations, said in April after visiting the shipyard in Maine where they are being built.

On a visit to a major regional security conference in Singapore that ended Sunday, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the Navy will be deploying 60 percent of its fleet worldwide to the Pacific by 2020, and though he didn't cite the stealth destroyers he said new high-tech ships will be a big part of its shift.

The DDG-1000 and other stealth destroyers of the Zumwalt class feature a wave-piercing hull that leaves almost no wake, electric drive propulsion and advanced sonar and missiles. They are longer and heavier than existing destroyers — but will have half the crew because of automated systems and appear to be little more than a small fishing boat on enemy radar.

Down the road, the ship is to be equipped with an electromagnetic railgun, which uses a magnetic field and electric current to fire a projectile at several times the speed of sound.

But cost overruns and technical delays have left many defense experts wondering if the whole endeavor was too focused on futuristic technologies for its own good.

They point to the problem-ridden F-22 stealth jet fighter, which was hailed as the most advanced fighter ever built but was cut short because of prohibitive costs. Its successor, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, has swelled up into the most expensive procurement program in Defense Department history.

"Whether the Navy can afford to buy many DDG-1000s must be balanced against the need for over 300 surface ships to fulfill the various missions that confront it," said Dean Cheng, a China expert with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research institute in Washington. "Buying hyperexpensive ships hurts that ability, but buying ships that can't do the job, or worse can't survive in the face of the enemy, is even more irresponsible."

The Navy says it's money well spent. The rise of China has been cited as the best reason for keeping the revolutionary ship afloat, although the specifics of where it will be deployed have yet to be announced. Navy officials also say the technologies developed for the ship will inevitably be used in other vessels in the decades ahead.

But the destroyers' $3.1 billion price tag, which is about twice the cost of the current destroyers and balloons to $7 billion each when research and development is added in, nearly sank it in Congress. Though the Navy originally wanted 32 of them, that was cut to 24, then seven.

Now, just three are in the works.

"Costs spiraled — surprise, surprise — and the program basically fell in on itself," said Richard Bitzinger, a security expert at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University. "The DDG-1000 was a nice idea for a new modernistic surface combatant, but it contained too many unproven, disruptive technologies."

The U.S. Defense Department is concerned that China is modernizing its navy with a near-term goal of stopping or delaying U.S. intervention in conflicts over disputed territory in the South China Sea or involving Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province.

China is now working on building up a credible aircraft carrier capability and developing missiles and submarines that could deny American ships access to crucial sea lanes.

The U.S. has a big advantage on the high seas, but improvements in China's navy could make it harder for U.S. ships to fight in shallower waters, called littorals. The stealth destroyers are designed to do both. In the meantime, the Navy will begin deploying smaller Littoral Combat Ships to Singapore later this year.

Officially, China has been quiet on the possible addition of the destroyers to Asian waters.

But Rear Adm. Zhang Zhaozhong, an outspoken commentator affiliated with China's National Defense University, scoffed at the hype surrounding the ship, saying that despite its high-tech design it could be overwhelmed by a swarm of fishing boats laden with explosives. If enough boats were mobilized some could get through to blow a hole in its hull, he said.

"It would be a goner," he said recently on state broadcaster CCTV's military channel.

___ AP writer Christopher Bodeen contributed to this report from Beijing.