MilOps Lahad Datu: Now Every Critique Can Fly…Kites

Those with keyboard military experience playing Command & Conquer et al are now asking why are our troops being flown using Air Asia aircraft. Lots of criticisms fly here and there accusing the armed forces of not having the capability to support such an operation…and this coming from the same group of people who questioned military and police purchases of new equipment.

First of all, it is normal for the military to utilise civilian aircraft to support operations, even if there is no critical operations taking place. The military has been using Malaysia Airlines for as long as I can remember, even when I was still a serving officer. Now, Air Asia is being contracted to ferry military personnel.

In this operation for Sabah, you need to move two infantry battalions from the Peninsula to Sabah, and move them in the quickest and fastest manner. All war materiel will be transported using the RMAF’s C-130 transport aircraft. You cannot transport armoured personnel carriers, artillery pieces in large numbers if the C-130 is filled with infantrymen. Logistically, an army has to arrive with its firepower at around the same time. You cannot deploy an army that is still waiting for its equipment.

Look at the picture below of our men leaving for Lebanon. What aircraft do you think carried their equipment?

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And what did the British use to transport their men and materiel to the Falklands?

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And what do the Americans use for deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan? The soldiers below are not at an Air Force base:

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And how did they fly?

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Come on, people! Most of you are learned lawyers and what-nots, but the way you think is just like a fourth grader. Use your brain if you actually have one. Stop whining, push politics aside and start supporting our men and women in blue and green because the closest you have been to going to war is only when you shout buckets-of-political-shit rhetoric and you are nowhere near the tenth percentile of being as brave as these men and women are.

So, just shut your trap if you have nothing good to say about them! Because you all sound like yeast-infected whiny old hags.

Sabah: Revisit 1950

We enter the fourth day of skirmishes with eight deaths on our side without any long-term solution. Fighting an almost endless stream of battle-hardened enemy along a porous coastline. Like it or not, we have to face the facts and hit it head on, and stop living in denial.

With Nur Misuari, leader of the MNLF, already giving a stern warning to Malaysia over the recent firefights, and the growing sentiment in the Philippines in support of their people fighting our forces on the eastern part of Sabah, we have no choice but to be firm. And when we fight an enemy that abides by no rules, we will have to make up our own as we did back in 1950.

The latest skirmish that cost the life of six police officers and men goes to show that there are sympathizers amongst the hundreds of thousands of Filipinos earning their living here – most calling Sabah home instead of the Moro region.

In view of this, I would like to suggest to the government to revisit the Briggs’ Plan not only to ensure that the militants do not get support from sympathizers, but also to ensure that those who are genuinely here to make Sabah home are well taken care of in terms of provisions and medical treatment.

I leave the mechanism to the authorities but this is no time to be pussy-footing. The Sabah coastline that is exposed to infiltration stretches from Kudat and all the way southeast to Tawau. Even if we deploy all 300,000 men of the police and Armed Forces, we would be stretching our resources film-thin.

Give it a thought, but please don’t take another 23 days to decide.