When you build an air strip, how does it get different from a civilian one or military one ?
Its the media playing to the gallery
Of course even the air strip in Philippines occupied islands see paf birds Landing ...
As for Philippines being militarily weak, the downfall started with Marcos leaving the country dry having taken out 20 + billion apart from passing all state ventures to his friends, and when he was kicked out, the followers, starting from Cory (who has Chinese blood ... and was proud of it.. ) and the Chinese oligarchs had no interest to beef up the forces, end the internal civil strifes - NPA, MILF, BIFF, ASG, and what nots - and the Chinese oligarchs have managed to influence the policy makers from not spending too much on military and offers China, as, most of the Chinese oligarchs major investments are in China
And beyond comprehension, China has of late taken direct or indirect control over some of the major infrastructures and such in Philippines, including a major cargo operation, through their known proxies (and that's not an imaginary story ..)
And the way the post Edsa constitution was formed guarantees that a vast portion of national income goes to pork barrel, so why would the senators and congressman stop their non stop flow of billions of peso of free cash with next to no accounting required, by asked to divert it to military spending ?
And while people loudly claim Marcos had a strong air force, in reality, late 1970s the military was in shambles. And the non stop spending of the missus only bled the country more.
I hope the long timers here know even the armed forces were running their own corruption scheme, skimming a lot of money, purportedly to their own private retirement fund, and statistics say nearly every armed force officer knew about it but kept quite about the nearly half skimmed.money, money allocated for purchase and upgrades, because nobody wanted to lose out the common retirement fund
Rumour has it the illegal retirement fund was never dismantled and even now part of armed forces budget supposedly gets skimmed. Hence the purchase of used Uh1, used armoured cars, used IFVs, or polish helicopters - for the army, while the president flies on brand new Bell 412s.
Anything more I need say ?
In short the past rulers of Philippines have spun a complicated messy web of lies and stuff, and have got no way out of it.
Most smart Filipino knows about it, but dare not talk about it loudly because talking against any powerful man or family always finds a person's life span reduced promptly.
So nothing's gonna happen, people pretend to be scared of China, and China will pretend to be annoyed but at the same time very benevolent to Philippines and life will go on as normal.