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Subscribe to RSSThe Obama administration and Philippine officials are in talks about expanding military cooperation, including joint exercises in the Pacific, but adding American bases to the island nation is off the table, both countries said on Thursday.
Talks with the Philippines, a U.S. ally which voted to remove huge American naval and air bases 20 years ago, follow Washington's announcement of plans to set up a Marine base in northern Australia and possibly station warships in Singapore. Those moves come as part of the Obama's administration plans to enhance American presence in Asia because of the region's economic importance and China's rise as a military power.
Philippine Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin told The Associated Press that any additional joint military activity would conform with the 1999 Visiting Forces Agreement, a bilateral accord that allows U.S. ship visits and American troops to hold joint military exercises in the Philippines. There would be no discussion on bringing back permanent U.S. military bases in the country, he said.
“U.S bases in the Philippines would be out of the question,” Peter Galvez, acting chief of staff to the secretary of national defense, told the New York Times on Thursday.
Pentagon spokesman Leslie Hullryde also denied talk of bases in the Philippines to Reuters.
"We are holding a bilateral strategic dialogue, during which we will discuss a broad range of issues, including our cooperation on counterterrorism, counter-proliferation, disaster preparedness, border security, and human rights," Hullryde said. “… The idea that we are looking to establish U.S. bases or permanently station U.S. forces in the Philippines - or anywhere else in Southeast Asia - as part of a China containment strategy is patently false," Hullryde said.
The Washington Post first reported on Wednesday that negotiations that would lead to a return of U.S. bases to the Philippines were in the early stages. Officials from both governments were quoted as saying they were favorably inclined toward a deal.
The Obama administration describes the moves as part of a "pivot" toward economically dynamic Asia designed to reassure allies who felt neglected during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, but China sees the deployments as part of a broader U.S. attempt to encircle it as it grows into a major power.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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The government needs to focus on cutting spending - not spending money it doesn't have to build new bases around the world.
No bases ANYWHERE. Aircraft carriers are all we need. Close all US bases World Wide and let them ask for help when needed. America first. Feed, clothe, house, and educate American first. Hey Washington, remember us, We the People.....
Ummmm...and what happens if we go to war with a developed nation for the first time this century and they brutally damage an aircraft carrier.
Do we just abandon it if it doesn't have the ability to make it back to a US port?
1 down, 10 more to go.
There's a reason why there are US military bases in other countries, and unfortunately, we cannot trust the rest of the world to play nice without some supervision and the ability to take action when necessary
Serious, Carpet bomb a runway and get back to me.... Invest our money in us and not the local economies of these 800 plus bases we have World Wide....
hmmm considering that a carrier is always accompanied by a group of ships, and more than enough power to defend itself, the carrier is the vessel with the least risk of being severely damaged.
The carriers are sitting targets against Russian or Chinese anti-ship missiles and cavitating torpoedoes. The navy admitted this to Congress. As long as the US Navy fights vastly inferior countries who do not have navies, it is mere entertainment for vain Americans and megabucks for Lockheed and Northrup.
@ Jonathan-1917156
The Japanese were pretty good at getting at our carriers back in WWII, and that was with relatively slow propeller aircraft going up against radar and AAA batteries
We've had 60+years to refine anti-ship technology and so have other developed nations and I contend that offensive technology has progressed in leaps and bounds further than defensive technology.
There's not much a carrier battlegroup is going to be able to do against a supersonic anti-ship missile other then to get in its way to preserve the carrier.
Phalanx systems are not very reliable, and our laser defenses are still in infancy.
There is no such thing as anti-ship missiles. There are missiles claim to be anti-carrier. Even the US does not have such technology.
Just because China said they created a missile that can shoot at a carrier doesnt mean its true. Even if they do have the missile to shoot at a carrier, that dont mean its gonna hit. You really think its that easy to shoot at a carrier floating on a freaking PACIFIC OCEAN?
The Russian claimed they will retro fit all their fighter with plasma tech that will virtually make their plain invisible to radar; hows that working out for them?
Bases bring job and $$$. Thats why CA fought like crazy to keep them open here in CA. Viet Nam is open.
We should NEVER export our military and the benefits that go along with it. The problem we are facing today is an industry too willing to export out military in order to shore up contracts. This creates a scenario where public funds become utilized to ensure private entitlements. THIS IS WRONG people...
@Seriously? No...Really?!
US has the Aegis and other destroyer that will wipe out any country aircraft if they attempt what you said.
A recent release study by DOD showed that it will take China's 2/3 of its entire aircraft fighter to take out 1 Ticonderoga-class cruiser. US has 22 of these.
And you do know each carrier is protect by a nuclear-class submarine. 1 of these bad boy can wipe out all China's sub and carrier (1).
seriously,
well other than in the gulf, the aircraft carrier tends to stay well away of the action. This is what aircraft refueling gives you from a tactical standpoint. If any ships were to get even close enough during hostilities, then the carrier group escorts and flight contingent would take that ship out. It isn't that big a risk. Is it a risk, yes, but that is war, and when you engage in war, if you are not willing to take casualties, then you need to start asking yourself, why are you fighting that war. But a risk isn't the same thing as a likely risk.
Also WWII was a different time, in the infancy of electronic warfare. It would be difficult to even remotely compare the differences in risk between then and now. And that is ignoring that at the time, Japan was fairly equal in power to that of the US, where right now, the US is responsible for about half the globe's military spending. The ONLY way that an adversary could out fight the US is if they used gorilla or insurgent like tactics where military might isn't all that important, and that has NO impact on the US Navy or US Air Force. Only in land combat.
van-1120261
China has purchased russian 'anti-ship' missiles. The RGM-84 Harpoon is an american anti-ship missile, variants of the exocet missile are also considered anti-ship missiles. What China would have would have been included with the fleet of destroyers and cruisers that they purchased from Russia, and not indigenous to China.
As for other 3rd world countries, not bloody likely
The United States does not need to be the world's policeman.
The world has had a lot more to fear from the US than the US has had to fear from the world.
.
van.......no such thing as an anti-ship missle? I'm afraid there is. French made Exocets or American Harpoon missles are a couple of examples. The HMS Sheffield was sunk by an Exocet fired by the Argentinians during the Falklands war. The USS Stark was hit by an Exocet fired by the Iraqi's in 1987. The technology is very real and very much a threat to the US Navy.
@ van-1120261
Underestimating a potential threat is probably not a wise thing to do.
The point is, unlike in WWII, surface ships are visible to anyone with a spy satellite. Developed nations with such technology can easily keep track of the majority of a fleet's movements.
Regardless of whether the Chinese have actually created a ground-effect missile is just a small item.
The fact of the matter is that super-sonic missiles are accessible by most developed nations we might go to war with. And where advanced weaponry doesn't work, the Chinese and Russians have both shown throughout history that they have no qualms about using volume in place of technological prowess when the need arises.
Seriously,
And then we get into the same logic that resulted in 60 billion dollars being spent on a missile defence system that could be proven that it can't work, all because of a fear that north korea is about to attack the US with a nuclear missile.
Exactly when in the last 30 years has the united states really ever been challenged militarily?
Indeed, but it seemed to really anger the Russians that we had demonstrated we have the technology to negate their ICBMs (both the threat of it in the 1980's and the more real one in the mid 2000's)...makes for a nice little bargaining chip, albeit after a bunch of chest thumping and foot stomping.
Depends on how you define "challenge". I'd say the US military is challenged by the Chinese every time they conduct their war games followed by making overtures to take back Thailand and Taiwan
The Russians also challenge the US in their war games and their various offerings of aircraft, not to mention their escapades in Georgia on the eve of the Beijing Olympics. We can also thank our Cyrillic brothers for bring about the F117's retirement after they developed the kinds of radar that could light them up regardless of the older stealth technology.
But if you define challenge in the more direct and threatening sense, then no, the US has not been directly challenged to a duel by a developed country for quite some time.
seriously,
Actually it made them laugh because it took them only a few weeks to defeat it completely.
As for lighting up the F117, it was only ever stealthy because of the mission planning. Any deviation from that mission planning rendered it visible. That required the planners to know where every radar installation was. So the only way to keep it stealthy was to basically threaten your enemy to not move their radar installations so that the mission could be planned to kill the enemy.
United States 1776: This is not about policing the Pacific rim but about protecting our assets in it.
The Missile Defense initiatives? I thought Starwars practically bankrupted the USSR trying to keep up with it. They sure didn't seem to think it was a joke then.
As for the missile defense shield this millenium, I thought that it really angered Russia that we were planning on putting sites up in Poland and other Eastern Bloc countries to protect us from Iran's missiles
Russia didn't seem too thrilled about that since they saw it also as a means of negating the nuclear annihilation-balance with the US, which threatened to ignite another arms race.
Really? I wasn't aware of that. I knew that it had missions planned around avoiding radar sites, but I thought that it was just as a means of ensuring extra safety in the mission against the naturally stealthy attributes of the Nighthawk.
If we were just avoiding radar sites, why didn't we just send in some A6's in Gulf War I instead since they've got way better payload capacity and could go super sonic AND jam radar?
No, the Soviet Union didn't even seriously try to compete with the 'star wars' program. They knew they couldn't. The Soviet Union was well on its way to collapse, but it was Afghanistan that hastened it. There were other factors though that contributed to what happened after the 'soviet union' collapsed though because the entire country was really a powder keg that was ready to go once the release was triggered (think of it as the stresses in tectonic plates that would lead to an earthquake.
Another factor in the Soviet Unions demise was Gorbachev, and his impressions that he got when he first visited Italy (before he became the secretary of the communist party). When he visited the country, he realized that the Soviet Union was a failure because it couldn't even feed its own people, and he knew that change had to occur, the only question was, how to do it while not causing a self created implosion.
Russia wasn't all that thrilled by the radar sites in Poland for other reasons. It basically gave the US a front line detection mechanism that because of geography, Russia had no possibility of creating. To understand that, you need to understand why the Warsaw Pact was created, the buffer that it created between western european powers and the main soviet union territory.
As to the F117, the sharp angled surfaces were designed to deflect radar signals, but because of the sharp angles, they could only do so from very specific angles, hence the need to structure your missions to ensure that the plane only approached radar installations from specific angles.
The A6 did have an ECM variant (the version that has 4 crew is that version), and the air force version is called a Weasel. This is actually still a current role (I think the current version is a modified F18 two seat variant, though I haven't kept up). It IS however a VERY dangerous role, because what that mission entails is to 'light yourself up' so that the SAM sites would change their radar mode from passive to active, which 'lights them' up, so that the weasel can take out the installation.
Once the radar installations have been taken out, you essentially have air superiority.
In the first gulf war, this was very much part of the mission planning. I am not sure what level of that activity occurred in the second gulf war, as I believe that there essentially was no radar capability in either iraq or afghanistan. There was in Bosnia however, and what they did is use mobile radar platforms and 'communicated' between them and they were able to detect and take down an F117.
While much improved in stealth capabilities, the F22 and the F35 both also suffer from differing levels of stealth. From what I have read, the F35 is only completely stealthy from the front cross section, so once you maneuver, (or if it is an air to air combat scenario, the opponent maneuvers), you lose a certain amount of your stealth. This is one of the reasons why maneuverability isn't as big a requirement on the F35, because the assumption is that it will never be in a dog fight, that it would rely on a Beyond Visual Range combat paradigm. The Eurofighter also relies on BVR as its combat paradigm, but it does so without the focus on stealth.
@ Jonathan-1917156
Gotcha! Thanks for the corrections/clarifications!
I'm rather aggravated by the design decisions on the F35. While its STOVL is neat, I think that its lack of maneuverability is going to be a serious problem if it ever comes up against a force of sufficient volume to bypass the safety of BVR.
But then again, I don't think that the F35 is ever going to be used against any force of sufficient complexity and technological prowess that that will be an issue (probably one of the reasons why the F35's front cross-section is the area that the designers most care about since it's assumed that it will just be going up against shoulder-fired missiles and AAA-trucks from Chinese/Russian surplus
But we've sure put all our future eggs in two Gen V Fighter baskets now haven't we? Let's hope that interceptor-drone technology doesn't breach the BVR safety zone before we move beyond the Lightning and Raptor
Personally I think that stealth is largely wasted anyways. Does the stealth which is resulting in a 'cheap fighter program' that will cost more than a trillion dollars and resulting in a plane that can't tolerate rain because it destroys the stealthy skin is really worth it? The F22 should have been a lesson for these issues, but so far, it has proven to be as big a disaster as the F22, which has not been used in operational combat as of yet.
Agreed! It was really meant to be used against the military of developed nations like Russia or China. And for the most part, it only offers a slight amount of penetration abilities in far less technologically advanced oppositions and a questionable amount, if any against the most advanced.
Worse yet, the risk of losing the technology to the opposition far outweighs the benefit of tempting fate with its penetrative abilities.
What issues? Lockheed got paid? Wasn't that the objective of the program in the first place?
From a military standpoint, the problems with the F22 are related to service availability. For those that think that the term Hangar Queen refers to the F15, well the F22 makes the F15 look like an amateur in that regard. The engines are fine, but the structure and the external shall requires far more painstaking manual labor to keep the plane serviceable. The F22 should have been a lessons learned experience because it was also a cost disaster, but no headway seems to have been made in the creation of a more robust 'skin'.
Van.... you really need to read up on your military weapons before you make public statements.
Admetum is correct. Exocets were fairly effective in the Falklands and that technology is over 20 years old.
But why the hype over establishing a base? The story clearly states that BOTH countries don't want that. If we did, the Phils would be a much better ally than Viets. We already have an agreement in palce to defend the Phils and they never embraced communism like the Viets. Besides, Vietnam has their own issues with China right now over the Spratly Islands. Read up on that one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exocet
Research the DF-21D that China has been mass producing for the last several years and their space based guidance systems made these missiles operational TWO+YEARS ago...
That large flat deck from space, only says one thing - SHOOT HERE...
The Phalanx has several weaknesses, that the DF-21D exploits and there are usually only TWO per vessel. Three incoming missiles and the vessel is toast...
Even the US Admirals have stated that the US Carriers are sitting ducks when they are with-in 2,000+miles of the Chinese mainland...
BTY - Time from launch to target @ 2,000+miles is eight minutes. Plus China is sharing this missile system with other countries - Iran for one...
You can thank Clinton for sharing the space and guidance systems with China...
Well if China stops your boats from fishing..remember we have no expanded bases to help you azz..will take time to get there as part of the cooperation only. It goes two ways Philippine's.
Don't worry about China, worry about the Islamic terrorists hiding out in their jungles like the Japanese in WWII.
The Philippines are are becoming increasingly dangerous for tourists because of those wackos!
But at least the Philippine government is interested in maintaining cooperative ties with the US, it will just suck for them immensely if China ever decides that they're tired of waiting for annexation with its former provinces and just decides to cross the Straits of Taiwan
The US has been fighting the Moras for 100 years. Give it up.
Why? Guam is an hour away and I think there is still a Marine base there ( last I heard they were expanding it when Bush II was in office )
Guam is a nice small base. Otherwise it's pretty much a rock in the middle of the ocean. To make it fully functional we would probably need to take possession of the other 2/3 of the island. I spent some time there and I hope they leave it as is.
In the 70's, we erected a dictator there, then we offered the dictator sanctuary when his people were ready to topple him down in the 80's. And we collected his country wealth which he brought out in the C-130. Now we want to go back again!
@ Victor C.
It's a sad fact that powerful countries take diplomatic shortcuts when relying on a particular patch of geography in order to handle are larger, more pressing problem or a desire for cheap access to natural resources.
examples:
--Support the Shah of Iran to ensure that the Allies had oil during WWII and the Cold War (gave us the Iranian Revolution, Hamas, and perhaps a future nuclear Iran...thanks Churchill and FDR through Nixon!)
--Support Afghan terrorists to fight a proxy war with the Russians (this doozy gave us a nuclear Pakistan, the Taliban, Mujahadeen, Lashkar Etaiba AND Osama Bin Laden...thanks Reagan!)
--Support Saddam Husein to fight the Iranians (gave us Gulf War I and helped build anti-American sentiment even further in the Middle-East...thanks again Reagan!)
I can only imagine how long even more horrible things will befall the US when the remaining shoes drop because of our support of the Saudi Royal pigs, the Syrian dictator, etc.
yep, look how well it worked out for the people of Philipines the base closure! That base along with those servicemen and women that went out in town and spent their income kept the place "floating"! I was there 1 year ago and the place has gone down visibly!
in conclusion it is easy to play the bad American card but few if any thought of the long term impact!!
Not that I am advocating bringing the base back! They made a bone head decision let them live with it!
Not a lot of macro economics courses available over there I presume.
Or they realized the economic impact and just wanted us out of there regardless.
They knew the economic impact, they just wanted them out there.
We should have let the Japanese stay there. No good deed goes unpunished.
The Philippine government kicked the US military out of their country. We should forget about trying to build another military base there and forget about cooperating with their military. Let them fight their own battles. We don't need to get involved with them again. They are as bad as the Pakis.
where are all the people against wars???????? putting in bases because china is getting a military? so now we are going to have a false flag on china it was iran last month now china.... democrats and republicans are all the same just in different cloths... ok for dems to have a war machine when in office just like the repubs.... no matter who is in office you get the war machine going..... 1,200 troops in lybia some in samolia some in yemen all over.... what are we afraid of????
Philippine and US cooperation means the Philippines want US money, but not to expect any cooperation.
The Philippines was once an American Colony until its independence in 1946 from the US. It is enjoying its sovereignty and understand quite well its vulnerability to any foreign power incursions like China, as well as being under a colonial power. If real crisis arise, the Philippines will and can be a trusted ally and partners-in-arms with the US.
No, not now. They can not be trusted to be our ally either. They don't want us there so they can take care of their own problems.
@GTR5:
It pains me to think how little some people commenting on global issues actually know so little about them. With internet news and a computer, everyone thinks he is an expert.
Yes, I'm talking about you!!
Your brand of isolationism in a rapidly globalizing world is a dangerous approach. Consider that American isolationism failed miserably after WWII, that was nearly 100 years ago. How could such an approach work now for the U.S., or any a country like it, in today's world?
When there were bases in the Philippines, it was one hell of a fun port of call.
China has taken much more provocative actions in the South China Sea. It was not that long ago that a Chinese gunship killed dozens of Vietnamese sailors on the Spratley Islands. We will not stop the development of the Chinese military but we don't need to help them. American universities need to keep our military and dual use technologies. Don't be like the President of the University of Michigan who told the FBI that she was too busy to talk to the FBI about the security risks of Chinese students. Read more at www.china-threat.com
Good. The problem is , it starts as talk and ends up as a war. Then , we try not to win it-look at the Korean peninsula. It was all decided at Yalta to divide the Koreas-then a phoney war broke out and the troops were told not to cross the 38 line. The brave general ( many are just apple polishers and get promoted) MacArthur told the politicians the truth that one does not win wars like that,so he was fired. Now, we still have troops there and for what ? The Koreas should have been united long time -end of Cold War -right ? No, so the already rich get richer and the poor peons freeze their butt.The endless wars continued from MacArthur's time till we got to the point of a need to borrow money from a Communist China right next door to South Korea. The imperial posturing is not doing anyone any good except to justify spending money that we do not have. Vote Ron Paul and solve this problem.
For the capabilities of our military, we do not need a base in the Philipines. We need the resources (for example, oil) from that region. Let the world be clear about it. Anyone is on our way, he does not know what he is getting into.
The U S military is vastly superior to any other nation and we could close numerous bases and moth ball half our Navy without hurting our national defense. The military and our government have too many people devoted to spending our dollars to line the pockets of those that make money from providing military hardware. During the Reagan years we wasted billions trying to come up with anti missile laser devices but ended just making money for defense contractors. I would like to see our government at least base our defense spending to be twice as much as our nearest would be enemy and not ten times the amount.
@ Bob L-3429067
While I agree with the sentiment, in practice, the costs are lumpy and not clearly defined. A better measure would be to say "I think we should focus on being at least 2x more effective than the next-most effective military power as opposed to being 10x more effective".
Additionally, world militaries improve over time, it's not specifically a matter of spending more, it's about keeping that lead, and certain technologies offer a greater lead than others, and there are synergies and necessary interim technologies that yield unexpectedly greater results.
Look at what happened to the space program. The US decided that it would spend only 5x as much as the rest of the world does on space exploration and related R&D. How's that been faring for us lately?
Lastly. Look at the US's military prowess. Our country today can enter into another and suffer very few casualties because of the vast disparity between our force vs. our opponent's.
How many more casualties would you be willing to accrue to save money now in a protracted war later?
If you didn't want to spend the dollars today to work on expensive projects like the UCAZ, which son of yours would you select to fly on the next sortie because we wouldn't have unmanned attack craft? Or would you want your son(s) in a main battle tank that is 10x more likely to survive, or 2x more likely to survive compared to our opponent's tank(s)?
Mind you, I'm actually not a big proponent of a giant and bankrupting defense budget, just trying to add some perspective and play devil's advocate.
I think that the areas where we can cut waste are in:
In all, I bet that many billions could be trimmed from the Defense budget by simply taking care of the graft and inefficiency before even having to deal with slashing programs themselves. But that's not to say I'm against program slashing as well.
We have enough bases and war equipment........... Good call to tell the U.S. war mongers to piss off!
"but no military basis" , sounds good but now the commies will get us.
Showing the flag can be expensive. Sending the fleet to the far east and Indian Ocean area of the world requires support facilities in a logistic sense. Operations off the coast of Vietnam on Yankee and Dixie station in the 1970s would have been difficult if not impossible without Clark AFB, Naval Station, Subic Bay and Naval Air Station, Cubi Point, Philippines. My home away from home. Logistic Supply is super important to the Fleet. With the number of ships being reduced and support bases nonexistant, prepositioning of a deterrent force is a joke and shows the weakness in the Obama plan for defense.
I've been reading some of these comments about the Philippines and them needing us. Gives me a reason to laugh. We need them to give our Fleet the logistic support required to make it effective at long distance. We need support bases in that region of the world. Most of these comments shows just how far up your asses, your heads are when it comes to projecting power and showing the Flag. Obama as Commander and Chief couldn't command a row boat without sinking it. He is a cluster "F" waiting to happen. The way things are coming down the military is going to be lean and weak, not lean and mean.
why is it that we need too provoke other country's into a war? if say china were to start building bases around the U.S. our govt. would probably say close them take your weapons home or we are going to take them out, for us this is a premtive attack, as to insure our saftey. so what do you think the china thinks!