Subs more prestigious than practical

It seems that the Philippines may soon have a submarine “force” of its own.

This after confirmation that the Philippine Navy recently submitted its wish list for new assets that include submarines, to be paid for as part of the 10-year modernization plan worth ₱2 trillion recently approved by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

“We do not only (need) one submarine, we need two or three… The Horizon 3 was approved, we gave our list (but) we don’t know which of our requests was approved,” said Commodore Roy Vincent Trinidad, spokesman of the Philippine Navy’s for the West Philippine Sea.

Horizon 3 is one of the phases of the armed forces modernization program.

We would like to reiterate something already mentioned in a previous editorial still about the planned acquisition of submarines; it’s still better to have surface ships.

Our arguments still remain the same. It will be more expensive to train personnel for submarines compared to surface vessels. Submarines are also more expensive to maintain than surface vessels. Because we can’t expect them to be on perpetual patrol, housing them won’t be cheap either.

Add to that surface ships can also come to any scene or respond to any incident more quickly because they can be stationed in more areas around the country. Needless to say we can probably get more surface ships for the price of two or three submarines.

Let’s be honest here, we just want to have those submarines so that we can look stronger before those who are encroaching into our territorial waters.

In a situation where intimidation is needed --and we say this because an open shooting war with any nation should be the absolute last thing we want to happen-- it will be better for our supposed opponents to actually see the ships as opposed to what they can’t see.

Like we said in that same editorial, submarines are more for prestige than anything else.

Our interests are better served by vessels that can patrol our waters in bigger numbers, with more frequency, and respond more quickly to events.