PMA cadets holding own war games

FORT DEL PILAR, Baguio City – The country’s premier military training institution is now reworking its syllabi to adapt to a post-Sept. 11, 2001 world order.

Summer field training exercises (FTX) of the 900-strong Philippine Military Academy (PMA) cadets are designed to prepare them to fight future "global terror."

This week-long version of the war games started last week after the PMA welcomed 437 new plebes, including 51 females, into its fold.

During the exercises, the cadets will be in a simulated counter-terrorist operation, which departs from the usual training of our soldiers.

Brig. Gen. Edilberto Adan, newly installed superintendent of the PMA, said he plans to upgrade the academy’s equipment, such as military hardware used for field exercises.

He said future PMA graduates will fight a new breed of terrorists, whether here in the country or on foreign soil. "This will be integrated in the new curriculum being developed," he said.

While conventional and traditional tactics will still be taught to the underclassmen, the syllabus will also incorporate new trends like counter-guerrilla tactics and counter-terrorism operations, Adan said.

During a recent visit here, AFP chief of staff Gen. Roy Cimatu acknowledged that the PMA needs to shift military strategy employed against the bandit group Abu Sayyaf, and that this should start in the academy.

"This early, they will get the heat and feel of it," Adan said.

Himself a PMA graduate where he was taught conventional warfare, Adan did time in Mindanao where he was introduced to the new enemies of the state. He was AFP spokesman before getting the top PMA post last April.

Nine hundred cadets, half of whom will be acting as "terrorists," started their simulated activities Sunday somewhere in Pugo town, La Union. The exercises will wind up Saturday along Kennon Road, where a fortified "terrorist" camp is located.

The FTX will introduce cadets to night and day operations, offense and defense, linking operations, recovery of firearms cache and final assault. Available military hardware and blank ammunitions will be used, Adan said.

"Such ‘new’ exercises is something being looked forward to by future officers of the military ... that could readily be applied when one goes to the field after graduation," said a major who graduated from PMA in the ’80s, when conventional warfare was the vogue.

"The times are different now. Filipino soldiery must also reinvent itself to meet these times," he explained.