Sendoff Members of the Philippine Navy hold a sendoff ceremony at Pier 13 for the BRP Ramon Alcaraz (PS16) which is departing for Sattahip,Thailand to participate in the inaugural Asean-United States Maritime Exercise on September 2 to 6. BOB DUNGO JR.

Philippine Navy (PN) Chief Vice Adm. Robert Empedrad said the Navy will continue with its modernization program to further improve the country’s territorial defense and better guard the country’s waters from the intrusion of foreign vessels.

“We are modernizing. Remember that we are a maritime nation, we have so many islands. Everything comes from the sea, even terrorists use the sea to transport their logistics. If we disrupt the supply lines of the enemies, it (will be) a big help in our fight against terrorism,” said Empedrad during a press briefing held at the Navy headquarters on Wednesday.

Reacting to Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana’s earlier comment that the country has weak capabilities to stop ship intrusions, Empedrad admitted that as a maritime nation, it is very hard to guard our territory from ships or vessels which illegally enter our waters.

With this in mind, Empedrad said the PN is continuing its modernization efforts through the support of President Rodrigo Duterte as they will be commissioning into service four additional amphibious assault vehicles (AAV) worth P2.42 billion and three more multi-purpose attack craft (MPAC) on 16 September.

According to Empedrad, the AAV are armed with .50 caliber machineguns, 40mm grenade launchers and smoke launchers, while the three MPAC will be armed with Spike-ER surface-to-surface missiles.

“That’s why the President approved our acquisition of our eight fast attack craft missiles that can sail 40 knots. And if we are able to get six Corvettes and another two Pohangs from South Korea, I think we are credible enough to secure all our territorial waters even if it’s in Mindanao, Northern Luzon or Visayas region,” he added.

Meanwhile, Empedrad said that the participation of Filipino sailors in various maritime exercises are geared to inter-operate their ships with the ships of other countries to address common maritime security, like piracy and HADR (Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief) operations.

Empedrad made the remark as the PN held a send-off ceremony for its Del Pilar-class patrol ship, BRP Ramon Alcaraz (PS16), held at Pier 13, South Harbor, Manila on Thursday.

The ship departed Manila for Sattahip, Thailand to participate in the inaugural ASEAN-United States Maritime Exercise on 2 to 6 September.

With regard to the deployment of the PN’s most powerful and newest ship, BRP Conrado Yap (PS-39), Empedrad said it can be deployed in Palawan, Zamboanga and can patrol the eastern side of the country.

“It can do patrol in the eastern side of our country, we can have it go to PH Rise once in a while,” he said.

On the Navy’s plan to acquire submarines in the future, Empedrad said President Duterte has already approved it in principle.

“We presented major projects of the navy to the President, the President already approved in principle our submarine acquisition,” Empedrad said.

“The most important is the fast attack interdiction craft missile. There are eight, four will be built outside the Philippines while the four will be in the naval shipyard. We will capacitate our naval shipyard so in the future we can already build our own ships.”

“This is important to our self-reliance defense posture that the SND (Secretary of National Defense) is pushing so that we have our own capability to build our own. We can capacitate the Armed Forces to build our own capabilities,” he added.

On the possibility of buying destroyers in the future, Empedrad said acquiring just even one of those is too costly.

“It’s more expensive than a submarine which is P35 billion. A heavy frigate can cost you P60 billion. A destroyer can cost you P100 billion. Relative to our neighboring powerful navies, we are still far. But as the saying goes, a thousand-mile journey shall begin with a first step,” Empedrad said.