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The Philippines and the US kicked off three weeks of military exercises on Monday that are set to further strain the countries’ relations with China.
This year’s staging of Balikatan, the allies’ largest annual military drill, will include a joint sail in the disputed South China Sea outside the Philippines’ territorial waters. The French navy, a first-time Balikatan participant, and the Australian navy will also join the manoeuvres.
While the US and the Philippines resumed joint naval patrols in the area last year, and the US has in the past sailed there with other allies and partners, it will be the first time that the Balikatan drills have extended beyond 12 nautical miles off the Philippine coast and into waters claimed by China.
Beijing claims the South China Sea almost in its entirety, despite a 2016 arbitration ruling that rejected the main elements of its claims and found many of its uses of the waters violated Manila’s rights under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Six Philippine coast guard vessels will also participate in the drill, the first time the service — which has been at the forefront of frequent clashes with China over the past year — has been included in a military exercise.
Chinese coast guard ships have used increasingly violent means such as water cannons to disrupt Manila’s regular resupply missions to a Marine outpost on a former warship it stranded on Second Thomas Shoal. The shoal is located in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, but China claims sovereignty over it.
In a reference to Balikatan, the Chinese foreign ministry last week warned the Philippines that “handing over one’s security to forces outside the region will only lead to greater insecurity and turn oneself into someone else’s chess piece”.
Colonel Michael Logico, director of the Philippine military’s Joint and Combined Training Center, said every country had the right to defend itself. “We are not deterred by what other countries think about what we’re doing,” he added.
Another closely watched component of the drills will be the Strategic Mid-Range Fires missile system, known as Typhon, which has a range of up to 2,500km. The US Army airlifted the system to the Philippines this month, the first such deployment in the Indo-Pacific. Intermediate-range ground-launched missiles had been banned under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, but the pact collapsed in 2019 after both the US and Russia left it.
US and Philippine officials said Balikatan would only feature logistical exercises with the Typhon, such as rapidly moving the launch system when threatened, but there would be no launches.
Troops will also practise tracking and targeting air and missile threats, retaking enemy-occupied islands in the Philippines’ far north, just south of Taiwan, and sinking a ship off the coast facing the South China Sea, expanding on drills last year.
The 2023 drills marked a significant expansion and deepening of the Philippine-US military alliance, doubling the number of participating troops and for the first time including islands neighbouring Taiwan, which in the past had been viewed as too sensitive. It also included Philippine bases to which US troops had only recently gained access.
This year’s exercise, with almost 17,000 soldiers, will be close to the same scale, but Lieutenant General William Jurney, commander of the US Marines in the Pacific, called it the “most expansive yet” as the drills will be more complex.
The exercise coincides with an annual conference by China’s Navy, which will be attended by senior military officers including from the US. It also comes as US secretary of state Antony Blinken is heading to China on Wednesday in the two countries’ latest effort to manage tense relations.
