This was a major malfunction in the Philippine military/National Police ,, Cotabato has been hot for a long time now... and for 40 years the Philippine military has been pretending to deal with Islamic terrorists/MILF while their local commanders collect bribes to leave them alone..
Their solution is to bring in the “best” soldiers they have ,, which in most countries means from their capitol city ,, unfortunately these men were well schooled in collecting traffic ticket bribes and bribes for not shutting down unlicensed food vendors NOT fighting a hot action.
They should have sent 1 man with a rifle.
-——traffic ticket bribes-——
While speeding through a village one day on my way to Manila, I heard the shrill whistle of the local cop and saw him in the road waving his arms to come back
I did so, because it was bad form for an American to disregard a cop. In the discussion he told me that i needed to return and appear before the court. He said you are guilty and unless you bring 20 lawyers, the judge will find you guilty.
I gave him 20 pesos and went on my way chastened
Sounds like an Obama rat infestation.
September 2014 our Marines were sent there for jungle warfare training.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9-9GSkOOfg
That may be the case in some countries, but the Filipino police officers that got killed were not traffic cops. They all belonged to the Special Action Force, and were among the most elite combatants available. These cops are as far away from traffic cops as a rubber ducky is from a frigate. They have been trained by the best, and can be considered more of a paramilitary special forces team rather than police. Somewhere between GSG9 (the German special police force) and KSK (the German military special forces).
Definitely more capable than one man with a rifle, something that Abu Sayyaf has learned over the years at the hands of the SAF.
Yes, they got massacred in this case, but that is an outcome that can occur whenever the enemy sets up an ambush and basically saturates the area with ordnance. It can happen to even the very best - and by the very best I mean the very best.
A good example is the 2011 ambush in Afghanistan, where a Chinook helicopter, call-sign Extortion 17, was ambushed by Taliban. As the Chinook was flying past the vile enemy literally just saturated the air with RPGs, one got the tail rotor, and Extortion 17 went down. In it were 38 men, 30 of them American and half of those being members of the Gold Squadron of DEVGRU (SEAL Team 6). That one attack was the hardest hit the special operations community has ever received, and especially hit DEVGRU hard. Delta Force has also not been spared, to the extent that at one point operators from DEVGRU had to work together with members of the Unit in missions due to the attrition the Unit had encountered in Iraq.
In essence, bad things happen when mistakes are made, and a very big mistake was made in the Philippines that led to many dead. However, none of those killed was a traffic cop, and all of them knew how to use rifles. Their recce was insufficient and they ended up being at the wrong place at the wrong time, which when it comes to fighting Jihadis can be an expensive butcher's bill.