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TweetWhereas 2014 was the year of the “Notice of Award”, 2015 was the year of deliveries. No less than 18 projects — for all three services — saw their first or full deliveries this year, making it the most active project-conclusion period since the first acquisitions of the AFP Modernization Program in 2003. Among the capabilities that […]

TweetIn the wake of efforts by the Senate Committee on National Defense to amend Section 53 of the Government Procurement Reform Act to give the President the power to negotiate modernization-related acquisitions (see here), supporters of local defense industry players sought to campaign the Office of the President to use that power to instruct the DND […]

TweetIn 2013, the Self-Reliant Defense Posture (SRDP) program — an ongoing albeit lackadaisical effort to create an indigenous defense industry — saw the most tangible display of high-level support in recent decades, when the Department of National Defense committed significant resources to the modernization of the Government Arsenal (GA), and facilitated the organization of the […]

TweetA fair number of discussions about SRDP, on various social groups, trumpet the abundance of skills in the Philippine labor force. This is how pronouncements typically go: “We have so many engineers, computer graduates, OFWs with technology exposure overseas, etc. . . . so we should be able to make our own weapons!!!”. These assertions, […]

Tweet@ 11:47: “We are not expanding to be a ground force rather we are powering up to project air power in service of our country and our people.”

TweetPhilippine military-oriented social media groups, from Facebook to Timawa.net are buzzing with talk about raising funds to help the AFP Modernization program. The Department of National Defense is reportedly even investigating a suspected scam involving individuals who are supposedly raising funds for the acquisition of equipment from concerned, but naive, Filipino nationals. But the sad […]

TweetThe 305th Contracting Office of the AFP Procurement Service currently has  P7,928,421.13 worth of bid invitations on PhilGEPS that dramatically illustrate the challenges that AFP logisticians face.  Instead of establishing service support agreements with aircraft suppliers, the service is inviting potential suppliers to 18 individual bids for C-130 components. These appear in the table below. For discussions […]

TweetTo protect the AFP against accepting unsupportable surplus equipment, Administrative Order 169, series of 2007 stipulated the following acceptance criteria. 3.2.3. Used equipment or weapons system may be acquired, provided that: a. The used equipment: or weapon system meets the desired operational requirements of the AFP; b. It still has at least fifteen (15) years service […]

TweetThe Government Procurement Reform Act (RA 9184), which currently governs all government procurement activities went into effect eight years after the Modernization Law. The complexities of the law’s checks and balances have been blamed for much of the delays in the implementation of the modernization program. Among the issues is the primacy of bidding as […]

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