The military wants to make AI and cyber people officers. Here is what that means.
The AFP says it will recruit cybersecurity and artificial intelligence experts, through a widened program that hands civilians an officer's commission without the military academy. The guidelines are still being written.
At a press briefing in Camp Aguinaldo on Thursday, AFP spokesperson Col. Francel Margareth Padilla said the Armed Forces of the Philippines will recruit more experts in cybersecurity and artificial intelligence to strengthen the country's cyber defense. The military is still writing the implementing guidelines. Once those are done, the actual hiring will be announced through the Department of National Defense and the AFP's major service branches.
The announcement follows a directive from Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. on July 25, which asked the AFP to expand its Direct Commission Program. Under that expansion, the program covers ROTC graduates, deserving enlisted personnel, and highly skilled professionals in cyber operations, artificial intelligence, engineering, aviation, communications, and research and development. The same order told the AFP to build merit-based paths for enlisted personnel to become officers, to consider accommodations for qualified persons with disabilities, and to design training for recruits who do not come from the usual pipeline.
What a direct commission actually is
A commission is what makes someone an officer instead of an enlisted soldier. The usual road to it runs through years of military schooling. A direct commission skips that road: the military identifies a civilian skill it cannot grow in-house fast enough, then brings the person in as an officer for that skill. What changed this week is the list of skills. Cyber operations and artificial intelligence are now on it, next to aviation and engineering.
Why it matters
Padilla put the reason plainly: "A modern AFP is comparable to a smartphone; the hardware itself is not enough; it must be equipped with the latest applications." New ships, planes and radars do not defend anything by themselves if nobody inside the institution can run the software around them. Padilla also said modern warfare is far from the conventional ground battle Filipinos are familiar with, and called talent a force multiplier. For a Filipino who writes code or works in security, this is a rare thing: a defense employer saying out loud that it wants your skill, on a path that does not require starting over as a cadet.
The catch to watch
No numbers have been announced. Not pay, not rank, not how many slots, not when applications open. Padilla said the guidelines are still being drafted, so today this is an intention rather than a job posting. The pay question is the hard one and nobody has answered it yet: a private company hiring the same security or AI skill can move faster and offer more than a government salary scale, and it does not need to publish implementing guidelines first.