Sabado, Enero 31, 2015

Lessons SAF could learn from the U.S Navy SEAL



 By MORTZ C. ORTIGOZA

The Mamasapano, Maguindano operation by the Special Action Force (SAF) was an almost botched raid. Its saving grace, thanks to the U.S Global Positioning Satellite (GPS), CIA's mole in the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, drone, and night vision goggles, was the finding, killing, and photo taking of Malaysian bomb maker, Zulkifli bin Hir alias Marwan, and cutting off one of his right fingers for DNA processing by the Americans. 
United States' Elite Navy SEAL (Sea, Air, Land) 
Photo Credit: www. earthlyissues.com
Marwan, considered as consummate master bomber, has a $5 million (P235 million) bounty from the U.S State Department.
Likewise, the strategy employed in the Mamasapano (geez, I used to jog in the 1980s at the nearby Awang, Dinaig Airport with my military father) slaughters of the 44 British Army SAS (Special Air Service) inspired Filipinos elite SAF members could not be likened to the SEAL’s feat in Abbottabad, Pakistan where No. 1 Islamist terrorist Osama Bin Ladin perished in the double tapped bullets of the SEAL’s Heckler & Koch 416 assault rifle.
The U.S commando there were borne by two stealth UH-60 Black Hawks and two CH-47 Chinooks from  Jalalabad, Afghanistan to Pakistan while the 300 SAF traveled surreptitiously by foot through their sturdy boots to the target area.
The only stealth operation in the Philippines that until now remains unexposed was when the 1996 multi-billion pesos funds for the  AFP Modernization Act under Republic Act 7898  were pocketed by government officials during that time.
The monies used to purchase a squadron of F-16 Falcon's multi-role fighter jets, modern helicopters probably like the non-stealth UH-60 Black Hawks, frigates, tanks, others were lost after a huge chunk of the lands in Fort Bonifacio was sold by the government to the present owners of the burgeoning and bustling Global City in Taguig City. If you disagree what those scoundrels on the Bonifacio’s deal had done was stealth, then we can settle that it was a “steal” , son of a gun, in chutzpah.