Malaysia-Indonesia-Philippine joint maritime patrols in Sulu Sea to start in April


TLDM's KD Kedah

Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines will commence joint patrols in the Sulu Sea in April, potentially putting an end to decades of lawlessness in the resource-rich waters.

Speaking to Channel NewsAsia in an exclusive interview on Tuesday (Mar 14), Malaysia's navy chief, Admiral Ahmad Kamarulzaman, said the cooperation is unprecedented and reflects the level of trust and confidence among the three nations.

"We first discussed it a year ago and now, we are looking at launching our first joint operation from Sandakan sometime next month," said Admiral Ahmad. "The three navies of Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines will be working together.

"This is unique in the sense that not very often can you achieve this level of consensus, showing that all sides are serious in mitigating the challenges at sea especially due to kidnap for ransom and other cross-border crime."

The initiative in the Sulu Sea will involve not just maritime patrols, but also air patrols of the waters and coastline, said Admiral Ahmad. It is modelled after the current multilateral patrols in the Strait of Malacca that have successfully lowered the number of piracy cases reported to "almost zero", the navy chief stated.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has also given Malaysia and Indonesia the green light for the "hot pursuit" of militant boats in Philippine waters. He said that if authorities in Malaysia identify militant vessels, they can chase them even into Philippine waters.

sos


Oh, and welcome to V24.

This post has been edited by MilitaryMadness: Mar 17 2017, 07:48 AM

There are more dedicated attack helicopters than those that you list.

Also, basic attack missions apart from anti-tank duties can also be taken by armed helicopters. They may not be as capable, but they are much cheaper, have basic observation & targeting capabilities, and are definitely better than nothing.

Last time when I still civil servant sometimes my department will be invited to PDRM shooting event. I once fired M16 full mag, made the mistake of not wearing ear protection.

I went like 'what? can repeat ah?' to every person that tried to speak to me for a week after.

Hardly the stuff of 'Malaysian army join Saudi-led Yemen war' meme some people retardedly claim to be.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but Indonesia was ahead of entire ASEAN since even the 1950s. Even when Malaysia and Singapore was just a twinkle in the British eye, Indonesian military already have very serious assets.


Indonesian Tu-16 Badger fleet


Indonesian KRI Irian Heavy Cruiser

I wonder what equipment will we use for our MRSS?

New helis, LCAC, landing crafts, amphibious armored vehicles? we never had most of these before. New purchases incoming?

Probably not. Nowadays small, fast jets very very hard to shoot down using MANPADS, especially not the state-of-the-art older ones like SA-7 or Stinger.

But then again, this is the Philippines we're talking about.

This post has been edited by MilitaryMadness: Mar 30 2017, 12:45 PM

Bizarrely, some writers have speculated that today's improved body armor has a strange side-effect.

More soldiers are surviving otherwise fatal injuries, but at the cost of permanent and often debilitating disabilities. These injured are severely overstretching the US military veterans aid agencies and limiting the number of those who could be helped by the agencies. This in turn is the leading cause of homelessness and often mental health problems for these disabled veterans.

Of course some do get help, but what about those who can't?

Indeed, but now even more suffering for these veterans.

Not all are able to get help from the VA. Furthermore their injuries, physical and mental, will most of their time exclude them from any meaningful civilian life. Some very severe injuries also need specialist care and physiotherapy that not all can afford on their military pensions. Not to mention all those cases of PTSD and other mental trauma that civilians usually dismiss.

Americans love the idea of a soldier serving the country, not the soldiers themselves. They see a random soldier, they will say 'thank you for your service', but does anyone say thank you to the homeless veteran on the street?

I wonder how many crippled and homeless veteran, discarded and dismissed by the society they tried to protect, ask themselves quietly at night: "wouldn't it had been better had I died back there?"

Flyovers don't mean gonna do major exercises. In Klang valley very usual to have military planes go round and round.

Last weekend my area got at least 2 Nuri helicopters flying around at low altitude for about 2 hours. Nobody cared also.

Tiny Royal Navy patrol boats chases Spanish Navy warship out of Gibraltar waters



Spain has been accused of an act of war after one of its naval warships was chased out of British waters off Gibraltar amid rising tensions over the peninsula in the lead up to Brexit.

The Infanta Christina corvette sailed past the coast of the British territory at around lunchtime in what Gibraltar said was an illegal incursion and was pursued by a British naval vessel patrolling the Rock until it left. The Spanish warship sailed into British waters just hours after Spanish foreign minister Alfonso Dastis told Britain to 'calm down' following Lord Howard's suggestion Theresa May would go to war over Gibraltar.

The vessel's appearance today comes after Lord Howard said Britain should be ready to go to war over Gibraltar, which MPs have warned will be used as Brexit leverage by Spain. A Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs official said the Infanta Cristina was conducting a routine patrol to monitor migration or drug trafficking across the Gibraltar Strait.

Taking advantage to get pressure off western proxy forces? The SAA with Russian help really gained major ground past few months.

Is it me or is the chassis way too high? Usually tanks have a lower chassis profile, to minimize exposure and make a smaller target profile.

This vehicle seems like they just dropped a high-caliber gun onto an IFV chassis.

Indeed, but is it suited for the medium tank role? It seems to show its chassis wayyy too much. More target for the enemy to aim at.

In contrast, the ZTQ look more like a scaled-down normal MBT and at the same time keeping its parent MBT's advantages of low silhouette.

I think it all depends on exactly how they are using this vehicle exactly. A frontline Medium tank? a heavily-armed IFV escort?

The second role you could probably get away with it, seeing most IFVs are also designed in the same mould.

If used in the first role, it would probably stand out too much though. MBTs could get away with it because of the low chassis minimizes exposure and the fact that the exposed turret is the most protected part of the MBT, but IMHO this design would show (unnecessarily) too much chassis for it to work effectively in this role.

This post has been edited by MilitaryMadness: Apr 10 2017, 12:41 PM

Not a problem with the concept, per se.

Just the problem of dropping a high-caliber gun onto a too exposed chassis that looks like a goddamn delivery box.

IMHO a good tank design would be one to expose only the turret and as little of chassis as possible on the level above the tracks, not 90% of the chassis. That way less of the more vulnerable chassis is exposed to fire.



This post has been edited by MilitaryMadness: Apr 10 2017, 03:10 PM

Most of that is due to the sloping armor design.

Anyway, I find in most tanks the thickest armor is located on the mantlet area (front of turret beside the main gun). If any add-on armor like TUSK or Russian 'Dolly Parton' armor is developed, the mantlet is inevitably the most armored part of the system.

Not to mention allied ground-attack airpower is supreme in that war. I read somewhere air power knocked out like 70% of Iraqi armor even before allied tanks got there.

This post has been edited by MilitaryMadness: Apr 11 2017, 02:59 PM

Given that it is widely accepted that even M2 Bradley IFVs destroyed more Iraqi armor than even the M1 Abrams, I wonder how many armored vehicles did the Abrams actually killed in tank-on-tank battles?

Also because it flies so damn slow i heard that sometimes radar systems will ignore it as something significant and dismiss it as background noise.

Made of wood also helps,as it acts as a radar-absorbing material (RAM).