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Saturday, October 01, 2005
Philippine Air Force decommissions its 40-year-old fighter jets (1:05 p.m)
FLORIDABLANCA, Pampanga -- The Philippine Air Force on Saturday decommissioned its 40-year-old F5 jets that formed the core of the country's air defense and also saw action against communist and Muslim rebels and military mutineers.
The air force said the last 10 remaining fighter-bombers were too old and too expensive to maintain in view of the shift in military resources to tackling internal defense rather than external threats.
The first 23 brand new jets were acquired in 1965 from the United States under a bilateral military assistance pact, making the Philippines the first Southeast Asian country to have supersonic fighters.
Since then the jets have been used extensively to patrol areas claimed by the Philippines in the disputed Spratly Islands chain and the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. They were also used by the famous air force Blue Diamonds aerobatics team.
The jets were used to back soldiers fighting communist insurgents in the central and northern Philippines and Muslim separatist rebels and the al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf group in the south. They blasted military rebel positions at an airbase south of Manila during a coup attempt in 1989.
The whole F5 fleet has been grounded since May 2001 following a crash of one of the jets during a joint military exercise with the U.S. military.
The subsonic Augusta AS-211 jet trainer and light attack aircraft will temporarily perform external defense duties, the air force said.
Captain Ephraim G. Suyom, spokesman for the Air Defense Wing at Basa Air Base in northern Pampanga province said five of the remaining 10 F5s were still "serviceable" but all of them could be used "in case of war".
"In extreme emergency, you do what you have to do," Suyom added. (AP) |
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