Pleges of increased military assistance were the focus of Arroyo's meeting with US President George W. Bush last week as the two reiterated their mutual support in the war against terror.

For the armed forces of the Philippines, who are now engaged in an offensive against the 12,500-strong Muslim separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), such assistance cannot arrive too soon.

"This will be welcome assistance. If we have to modernize the armed forces using local funds, we will not be able to modernize it at all," said legislator Prospero Pichay, head of the House of Representatives armed forces committee.

Pichay says the military has only 18 helicopters and two OV-10 attack planes along with about six MG-520 helicopter gunships and two C-130 transport planes.

In the 1970s, when the US military maintained major bases in the Philippines as bulwarks against communism, generous US aid poured in, allowing the local armed forces to maintain almost 100 helicopters, 12 C-130 planes and a fleet of F-5 fighter jets, Pichay recalls.

This shrank to a trickle after the Philippine Senate closed down the US bases in 1992.

Since then, the military has had to make do with scarce resources even as it battles the MILF and the smaller Abu Sayyaf Muslim kidnap group in the south and the 9,000 communist insurgents scattered in the hinterlands of this sprawling archipelago.

Soldiers have struggled on with Vietnam-war vintage weaponry. The air force has converted SF-260 trainer planes into attack planes, using dive-bombing tactics reminiscent of World War II.

Senator Rodolfo Biazon, a former military chief of staff, says that "the helicopters that we have is only about 10 percent of what I saw when I was a regimental commander," in the south in the 1970s.

For him, the military's priorities are more helicopters for tactical mobility, fast patrol boats to guard the country's maritime borders and improved communications systems.

"I hope that these statements that are now coming out of the two presidents would make this dream a reality," Biazon said.

During Arroyo's meeting with Bush, she obtained a pledge for a new joint military effort to finally crush the Abu Sayyaf, a small group of Muslim guerrillas linked to the al-Qaeda terror network.

He also offered her 30 million dollars in new aid for training and equipping the military and gave the Philippines privileged status as a special "non-NATO ally."

This status would give the Philippines priority in receiving excess US military surplus, allow it to stockpile equipment and make it eligible to participate in research and development programs, the US embassy said.

The Philippines is the first Southeast Asian country to get this status.

Pichay is optimistic the Americans will come through.

"Considering the history of Bush where he really has the political will to do what he wants, and if he considers the threat in the Philippines as part of the al-Qaeda network ... then the aid will be given the priority," he says.

He stresses that the Philippines will not rely only on the United States and has its own military modernization program.

Manila has already set aside 5.4 billion pesos (101.8 million dollars) in a trust fund for military modernization but the procurement system has proven so slow that the prices of weapons often change before the deal can be sealed.

An ambitious 331-billion-peso, 15-year, military modernization program, approved in 1996 was put off by the economic crisis that hit the region a year later.

The military is now focusin on a 4.035-billion-peso modernization scheme with more modest targets such as upgrading old armoured vehicles and acquiring new diving suits.

Arroyo, however, has promised full details of the promised US military aid when she returns.

WAR.WIRE