Pacific Pathways 16-02

It was on this day that I left for the Philippines to be part of an exercise called "Pacific Pathways." It's an interesting concept -- instead of sending out multiple units to take part in multiple, disjointed of exercises across several different countries, why not send a single unit out to participate in the whole series?

Not only does this save the government money, but it helps units maintain their deployment skills.

The Army Times ran an article about it on May 14, saying "The soldiers will travel first to Thailand for Hanuman Guardian. Their next stop will be Indonesia for Garuda Shield, and they’ll wrap up in Malaysia with Keris Strike."

The following paragraph describes my role: "The addition of a tactical command post forward-stationed in the Philippines for the duration of the Pathway is new."

So while the participating unit visits Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia, my group will stay in the Philippines to try out this "forward command post" idea, and see if there's any benefit to coordinating things from one central location.

I was selected from among all the other officers in my section because -- having just arrived in February -- I was the only one would will still be around past the summer. So while it was not a distinct honor, I was still looking forward to it (somewhat).

On the other hand, I spent the summer of 2015 doing the Combined/Joint Logistics Over The Shore (CJLOTS) exercise in Korea, so I've begun to notice a disturbing trend in how the Army is filling my summers.

The first half of us flew out from Hickam Air Base to Guam's Anderson Air Base in a C-17, along will all our baggage and a few vehicles. After refueling, we went to the former Clark Air Base near Manila. The second half came in the next day.

Once we arrived, we stopped at a McDonald's to get a bite to eat and withdraw cash. I wasn't so interested in this, so I just stayed on the bus. What I *was* surprised by, though, was the number of Korean restaurants in that area.
We then rode a bus for about three hours and arrived at Fort Magsaysay, Nuevo Ecija province, after dark. I unpacked my things and settled in -- this was to be my home for the next two months.

In the morning, I got a better look around. Our housing was a bay-style barracks building with louvre-style windows. Our advance team had contracted to have air conditioning installed and powered by generators. The building that we would work out of was an old dining facility (complete with kitchen). And because this dining facility was filled with our communications equipment, we used the patio outside as our dining area. It wasn't exactly Hilton-style accommodations, but compared with "sleeping in a tent on the ground and eating MREs three times a day," this was just fine. And wait till you see what they came up with for catering -- I'll put that in my next post.