Thursday, October 11, 2012

Joint exercizes photos

Today, I talked Ruby into helping me walk the dog, and when we were outside we saw one of these going over at a low altitude:

photo Rouelle Umali China news.

this happens every year: The US military does jungle training in Ft Magsaysay, which is a dozen miles away.

Phil Inquirer story HERE.

Ruby hadn't seen this large type of helicopter before, and I told her that it was usually to transport troops and/or supplies or for rescue folks. I also told her that her uncle flew a helicopter before she was born, but it was an even larger copter, which he flew to clear mines.

No, I haven't worked with these: although my National Guard unit once practiced loading "casualties" onto an Apache.

These wargames go on every year for the past 29 years (and they are at a good time: about the time we get hit by typhoons and floods). So they are not only good practice, but at least twice since I moved here that they were here to help in rescuing folks.

I keep reading various stories about the US is "pivoting" to Asia to stop China, which might be true given the way China has started pushing everyone around in the last year or so (not only the Philippines but Japan and Viet Nam). But without more details, I can't say if this exercize is bigger than the usual ones.

So China has a story on one of it's English language sites about the wargames, including lots of lovely photos by a local photo journalist who is "Rouelle Umali, senior photojournalist from Xinhua News Agency".

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