The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) is looking to add autonomous and unmanned systems to its military arsenal as part of an asymmetric approach to address the country’s capability gap with a stronger adversary.
AFP spokesperson for the West Philippine Sea Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad revealed this during an interview on Bilyonaryo News Channel’s At The Forefront with Atty. Karen Jimeno.
Trinidad said the AFP needs to accelerate the development of its military capabilities as the pace of its adversary continues to increase.
“We could sustain operations for sure, but we need to have a spike, an increase in the way we do things. The pace of the adversary is fast,” Trinidad said.
“If we don’t increase our pace, the gap between us and the adversary would increase further,” he added.
Trinidad said the AFP needs more ships and aircraft, along with the support systems needed to operate and deploy them.
“We need more ships and the supporting systems for ships and projecting them outward. We need more air and the whole ecosystem for projecting fighter aircraft,” he said.
For the country’s land forces, Trinidad said the AFP is also giving emphasis to autonomous and unmanned systems as pushed by Defense Secretary Gilbert “Gibo” Teodoro.
“Same thing with our land forces. Emphasis also given by the SND (Secretary of National Defense) on autonomous and unmanned systems,” Trinidad said.
He said the Philippines, being a relatively small military, could gain an advantage by adopting an asymmetric approach that maximizes technology and other capabilities.
“We are a small military, we could have great leverage, our advantages by using an asymmetric approach, capitalizing on autonomous and unmanned systems,” Trinidad said.
Trinidad explained that an asymmetric approach means avoiding a direct contest based on the adversary’s strengths and instead exploiting the Philippines’ own advantages.
“When you say asymmetric approach, we don’t hit them based on, we don’t approach them based on their strength, but on our strength and leverage towards our advantage,” he said.
“And part of the asymmetric approach would be autonomous and unmanned systems,” Trinidad added.#