A trainer jet has figured in so many deadly crashes that it has been dubbed the widow maker in the Philippine Air Force. But it’s not just crash-prone trainer jets that have claimed the lives of PAF pilots. In a report covering the past two decades, the Commission on Audit counted 305 PAF pilots being killed in 156 accidents involving various types of military aircraft in the past 20 years.
Apart from the sorrow that every death brings, the lives lost also mean significant losses in terms of badly needed skills and state resources. Air Force officers are often graduates of the state-funded Philippine Military Academy. Millions of pesos are spent for the four-year education of a PMA cadet. Graduates who want to join the PAF must attend flying school and accumulate the required training, experience and flight hours before they can operate certain types of aircraft. Because of their field experience, many PAF pilots, after putting in the requisite years of service in return for their PMA scholarship, leave the military and become highly paid pilots in the private sector.
The Air Force is needed not just for combat operations but also for reconnaissance patrols to protect Philippine territory. The PAF is needed for rescue and relief efforts during disasters. The lack of aircraft endangers the lives of soldiers in the field who need to be airlifted to a medical facility.
In its 2010 audit report for the PAF, the COA said that with only 31 aging airplanes and 54 helicopters, the Philippine Air Force “virtually has a non-existent air deterrent capability” and is “ill equipped to be operationally responsive to national security and development.”
The standing joke is that the PAF is all air and no force. But there’s nothing funny when that non-existent air deterrent capability has contributed to the deaths of 305 pilots in the past two decades.
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Source: The Philippine Star, Editorial, Sept. 17, 2011
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