SHAH ALAM: The Philippine Air Force (PAF) took formally delivery of three aircraft – two TAI T129 ATAK helicopters and a single Airbus C295W airlifter – at the Villamor Air Base, Pasay City in Manila yesterday (April 6 2022).
The two TAI ATAK helicopters are part of six aircraft deal signed by the Philippine and Turkish government announced in July 2020. The ATAK deal is worth US$269 million (RM1.1 billion). The Turkish made helicopter is a twin-engine, tandem seat, multi-role, all-weather attack helicopter based on the Agusta A129 Mangusta platform and is designed for advanced attack and reconnaissance missions in hot and high environments and rough geography in both day and night conditions.
Meanwhile, the single C295W Airbus has handed over the fifth of seven C295 aircraft to the PAF in a ceremony held today, reinforcing its military transport capabilities. From Airbus
PAF ordered a fleet of new-generation C295 tactical airlifters as part of its medium-lift aircraft acquisition programme. These new combat proven C295s will be dedicated for troops and equipment transportation across the country.
PAF has been successfully deploying the C295 for a variety of transport operations, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief missions, thanks to its access to short unpaved airstrips in remote areas, while carrying heavy payloads over long distances. With this new aircraft and the other two soon to join the fleet, the air force will be utilising the aircraft more extensively to enhance its air-lift operations.
Congratulating the Philippine Air Force on the new C295, Airbus Defence and Space Head of Asia-Pacific Johan Pelissier said: “We celebrate with you the delivery of this fifth C295 to the PAF, underscoring the air force’s trust in our military aircraft. We are confident that it will be a capable addition to PAF’s fleet, playing a critical role in the country for many years to come.PAF’s extensive use of the C295 for various critical missions has fully demonstrated it as a reference user of the tactical airlifter in Southeast Asia.
With nearly 30% of the global orders acquired by military agencies in the Asia Pacific region, the highly versatile tactical airlifter is a benchmark for military and civic missions in all types of environments.
Airbus announced the order for three new C295s in early in 2021, though it did not announced PAF was the recipient. PAF already operates four C295Ms.
— Malaysian Defence
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View Comments (25)
Marhaim, are the MB 339s still completely grounded?
Yup
Philippine also need to invest more in training, simulator etc because recently a lot of their new assets crashed or damaged mainly due to human error. Not to mention other old assets that also crashed recently.
It is sad to see that Philippines, a country formerly notorious for corruption are now buying equipment for their military with reasonable costs that went through multiple of transparent publicly shown processes.
While here in malaysia, majority of our equipment are bought at ridiculous prices. Especially those so called "locally developed" products.
If we continue with our corrupt and wasteful ways, we will swap places with the Philippines, and we will continue sliding down the path of dysfunction.
I am guessing that the current defence secretary who was a former general realised from past experience that it was better to buy direct either via government to government deal or directly with the companies instead of buying through local agents as with our practice
gonggok - ''It is sad to see that Philippines, a country formerly notorious for corruption are now buying equipment for their military with reasonable costs''
The things they have going for them is a large level of questioning authority by various means; a press which reports more on defence and a manpower with a better command of English [making it easier in a large way to absorb certain gear]. It also helps that some Senators/Congressmen are ex military are know the issues faced. Similar to the TNI and the Thai military; how the AFP is viewed a national institution is somewhat different from how the MAF is viewed within Malaysian society; due to historical, social and other factors. The way they handle the local industry and the part the industry plays is also less ingrained and politically driven with a more sober assessment of what can or can't be achieved.
As it stands they ae making up for lost time and despite all the recent buys funding remains a key issue; they are like us; ''buying a bit of everything but not enough of anything; with the key exception of the PAF's rotary fleet which is something of great importance for them and something they always kept at a certain level even when times were bad.
gonggok - ''a country formerly notorious for corruption ''
Corruption is still a major issue as I can personally attest to.
Things started to go downhill for them in the 1980's; funding and other issues which had a major adverse effect. We also need to bear in mind that the rotary fleet was operating at a high tempo [troops spread out across the breath of the archipelago required support] in adverse weather; over rough terrain; on only IFR and in areas with poor ATC. We on the other hand even at the height of the 2nd Emergency never had to operate to such a high tempo and the CTS were confined to a few areas. Like the MAF the PAF still faces manpower issues; attracting and retaining the right people for various highly technical roles.
It is good for them to have a defence secretary that puts their nation's security above all else.
While here in Malaysia...
The C295W is meant to shoulder the role which is supposed to be filled with C-130. I guess they're willing to go with smaller aircraft if that meant they would get a brand new ones
In our case, I think we should get at least 2 more A400M considering we use them pretty extensively despite having pretty large transport aircraft fleet
For very good reasons, we tend not to have ex-military bigshots in politics...
As Azlan mentioned it goes beyond just having a nice defence secretary.
The arms forces of the Philippines modernization is an official gov act thus put the gov in legal binding position to acquire according to the plans with procedure according to the act.
The act prohibits them from buying prototype something we here so fond of doing. the Jose Rizal class fiasco is not to dissimilar to our own LCS fiasco.
Philippines has no meaningful manufacturing going on in their country, the economy is mostly service base thus industrial lobbies is far weaker then over here. The downside is like ID, weapon buying is used as foreign affairs instrument and thus they bought a lot of things in small batches from everywhere.
As for ATM, it does seem they focus more on commonalities to reduced operation cost even if it took them a long time to acquire a specific equipment.