“The US F-16 warplanes…are a 50-year-old 4th generation fighter slated for total phase-out by 2035”
THE US approved and expects the Philippines to buy 20 F-16 aircraft from it worth $ 5.58-billion (or roughly P 220-billion) following the much-ballyhooed visit of the US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to the Philippines last week.
These, amid new reports of the SWS survey of the highest yet Philippine hunger rate of 27.2 percent since the COVID-19 in 2020.
The US F-16 warplanes, which first saw flight in Dec. 1976, are a 50-year-old 4th generation fighter slated for total phase-out by 2035.
The US is trying to rid itself of its 775 units of F-16 inventory and the Philippines is being suckered into buying them as the Philippine government and military establishment eagerly sales talk the Filipino public to welcome this on the pretext of “defending” the Philippines’ West Philippine Sea claims.
If these F-16s the US is selling to the Philippines are supposedly to fend off the bogeyman China’s threat, then the US and the BBM government are telling us a sick joke. China is already flying its 5th generation, finless stealth fighter that is ahead in development against the US.
But while the sick joke may cost Filipinos hundreds of billions of pesos, it will likely mean hundreds of millions in commissions for the Filipino signatories to the deals.
The surge in the Philippine hunger rate is appalling when one considers that 27.2 percent represents almost 1 in every 3 Filipino experiencing hunger, i.e. one meal or so a day for three months, while 5.1 percent experience extreme hunger of having nothing to eat at least one day in three months.
One in every three Filipino means up to 40-million Filipinos experience these. Imagine the stunted brains of children of these families.
As all social surveys repeatedly report that up to 95 percent of the population consider the problem of food costs at the top of the three problems of the country, yet the government pays little serious heed and instead focuses much of its time and energy in political intrigues that divide the country, cover up corruption and in scapegoating China in imaginary South China Sea claims dispute to rationalize the militarization of the country and spend on military build-up.
It’s an “Information War,” a campaign of the government and its behind-the-scene master, the US, “manufacturing tension and conflict” against America’s “strategic competitor”– China, involving the entire gamut of government agencies churning out daily manufactured incidents to create anti-China propaganda in the South China Sea, fake spy stories and machinations against the Dutertes for their foreign policy independence.
The whole of Philippine society is now in a state of socio-political chaos and economic downspin as the nation loses hope, a state of things reflected in the nosedive of trust for the national leadership represented by Bongbong Marcos’ rating in the 1st Qtr. 2025 Publicus survey (one of the few remaining credible polling groups) reporting only 14 percent public trust for the president, that is like an edifice with one eroding supporting post.
It is no wonder that even a most senior and most respected Filipino retired statesman but still very active senior public intellectual has introduced the “R” word into the national discourse about the national crisis in his latest newspaper column.
Former government spokesman, assemblyman, senator, prolific book author, columnist Hall of Famer, Francisco Tatad asked as a title to his recent article, “Can we make a ‘revgov’ work?”
“Revgov” is short for “revolutionary government,” traditionally meaning to be a government set up not through election but through revolutionary means. In the context of Tatad’s article, he speculated on the possibility of Bongbong Marcos declaring “martial law” just as the Marcos senior did, or the pro-Duterte forces staging its own revolution to establish a new government “within and beyond Mindanao” to replace Bongbong Marcos.
Under these circumstances, the situation in the Philippines is expected to get worse, now compounded by the escalating insecurities as Australia and China issue travel advisories for their travelers to the Philippines (China protesting the Philippine authorities’ harassment of Chinese nationals in trumped-up spying cases, kidnapping etc.) and spreading talk of the US doing a Ukraine 2.0 in the Philippines soon.
The military establishment is a key factor in any “RevGov” talk and the latest AFP chief Brawner’s statement claiming China’s efforts “to recruit Filipinos with military backgrounds to conduct espionage activities…”
General Romeo Brawner Jr. should know a thing or two about spying of a foreign country being a graduate of the US Army War College in Pennsylvania.