Features | Security | Southeast Asia

Manila’s Piecemeal Military Modernization

For over 30 years, the Philippines has tried – and struggled – to bolster its defense capabilities. What went wrong?

Philippine Navy ship BRP Jose Rizal (FF 150) steams in a multinational formation during a photo exercise off the coast of Hawaii during the 2020 Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise, Aug. 21, 2020.

For decades, the Philippines was disincentivized from spending adequately on its external defense capabilities. Immediately after its independence, the country was beset with internal security problems ranging from communist rebels to Muslim secessionists, forcing the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to allocate its scarce resources on counterinsurgency. Moreover, the security umbrella that the United States directly provided through its bases in the Philippines further discouraged spending for territorial defense. 

The rug was finally pulled out from under the Philippines in 1995, when China seized Mischief Reef and Manila could offer no meaningful resistance. This led to the hasty signing of the first AFP Modernization Program. However, the endeavor was widely regarded as a failure for having bought nothing more consequential than utility helicopters and gun-armed patrol vessels. This failure could be attributed both to fiscal constraints, as the Philippines weathered first the 1998 Asian Financial Crisis and then the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, and the need to first decisively defeat remaining internal challengers to the state. 

In 2012, history seemed to repeat itself when the Philippines was again outclassed in its own Exclusive Economic Zone, this time at Scarborough Shoal. The Aquino administration hastily passed the Revised AFP Modernization Program, yet another 15-year effort aiming to build a military capable of external defense. Unlike its original iteration, the Revised AFP Modernization Program was born under more fertile circumstances. Not only had the internal security of the Philippines improved by then, but its fiscal capabilities were likewise brighter, even logging in a budgetary surplus more than once during the Aquino administration. Moreover, succeeding incidents in the West Philippine Sea were given top billing in newsrooms all over Manila, opening the eyes of the Filipino public to the challenge China poses to the territorial integrity of the Philippines.

All three branches of the AFP immediately found a partner in South Korea. While the Philippine Army bought utilitarian trucks, the Philippine Air Force and Philippine Navy scored more substantial purchases. The Air Force bought FA-50 light fighters from Korea Aerospace Industries, the first brand new jets purchased by the country in nearly two decades, while the Navy opted for two frigates from Hyundai Heavy Industries. The ships would later be known as the Jose Rizal class.

Owing to the lack of institutional memory in procuring big-ticket defense wares, the Philippine Navy made the mistake of procuring the Jose Rizal class in a fitted-for-but-not-with manner. This meant that the ships would arrive almost barebones, and the rest of the weapons suite would be procured one after the other as the budget and political will permitted. When the lead ship, the BRP Jose Rizal, was delivered, she was armed with nothing more but a 76mm main gun and a couple of 30mm machine guns – hardly an improvement over her sisters in the fleet. 

The newness of the modernization process should not be used as a scapegoat here. The Philippine Air Force did not commit this mistake in its first major procurement under the Revised AFP Modernization Program; the aforementioned FA-50 jets were procured with a full weapons and radar package, initial spares and ground support equipment, and even training simulators. 

Complications hit the procurement project right out of the gate. Originally, the contract for the Jose Rizal class called for the ships to be equipped with a combat management system compatible with Link 16, the jam-resistant network used by U.S. and NATO forces that allow their ships and aircraft to share targeting data and other tactical information in real time. For this, Hyundai Heavy Industries initially planned to equip the ships with Tacticos, to be provided by the Hanwha-Thales partnership, the former being a South Korean company and the latter Dutch. However, after the partnership fizzled out, Hyundai Heavy Industries swapped the world-class Tacticos with Naval Shield, the domestic counterpart developed by Hanwha. This caused consternation on the Philippine side owing to concerns over the questionable ability of Naval Shield to tap into Link 16. 

This became one of the first political scandals to hit the administration of Rodrigo Duterte. The firestorm started when a note favoring Naval Shield over Tacticos – handwritten by then-Special Assistant to the President Bong Go – was leaked to the media. A high-ranking officer of the Philippine Navy ended up being relieved of his post, and while nothing much happened on the political front for years, 2024 saw a plunder complaint filed against Bong Go, now a senator, in relation to the combat management system episode. 

Over the years, Manila tried to bring the Jose Rizal class to its full........

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