A Philippine Black Hawk helicopter takes off as U.S. and Philippine Marines take part in a joint amphibious exercise off the South China Sea on March 31, 2022 in Claveria, Philippines.
Ezra Acayan | Getty Images | News Getty Images
The United States and the Philippines on Tuesday begin their biggest combat exercises in many years, which can include live fire drills, including a missile strike that sinks a ship in the waters of the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, which is more likely to incinerate China.
The annual exercise by long-time treaty allies, often known as Balikatan – “shoulder to shoulder” in Tagalog – will last until April 28 and involve greater than 17,600 troops. It would be the latest display of US firepower in Asia, where Washington has repeatedly warned China of increasingly aggressive actions in the disputed sea channel and against Taiwan.
The Biden administration is strengthening the arc of alliances in the Indo-Pacific to raised counter China, including in a possible confrontation over Taiwan.
This ties in with the efforts of the Philippines under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to defend its territorial interests in the South China Sea by intensifying joint military exercises with the US and allowing rotating groups of US forces to stay in a more Philippine military camps as a part of the 2014 defense pact
The exercise, the largest in Balikatan’s thirty-year history, involves some 12,200 US troops, 5,400 Filipino forces and 111 Australian counterparts. US warships, fighter jets, in addition to Patriot missiles, HIMARS missile launchers and anti-tank javelins will probably be on display, in accordance with US and Philippine military officials.
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“We usually are not upsetting anyone with easy drills,” Col. Michael Logico, the Philippine spokesman for Balikatan, told reporters before the maneuvers began.
“It’s actually a type of deterrence,” Logico said. “Deterrence is after we discourage other parties from invading us.”
Logico said U.S. and Philippine forces will sink a 200-meter or 61-meter goal ship this month in Philippine territorial waters off western Zambales province. coordinated air strike and artillery bombardment.
“We are going to hit it with all the weapons systems now we have, each ground, sea and air,” Logico said.
This position facing the South China Sea and across the waters of the Taiwan Strait would likely have alarmed China, but Philippine military officials said the maneuver was intended to bolster the country’s coastal defenses and was not aimed toward any country.
Such field scenarios “would test the allies’ capabilities in combined fire, information and intelligence sharing, communication between maneuver units, logistics operations, amphibious operations,” the U.S. Embassy in Manila said.
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Washington and Beijing are on a collision course amid long-standing territorial disputes involving China, the Philippines and 4 other governments, and Beijing’s goal of annexing Taiwan by force if essential.
Last week, China warned against intensifying the deployment of US troops in the region. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning said at a daily press briefing in Beijing that “it will only result in greater tensions and less peace and stability in the region.”
Exercise Balikatan began in the Philippines a day after China ended a three-day combat exercise simulating Taiwan being cut off, following a gathering between Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last week in California that infuriated Beijing.
On Monday, the US seventh Fleet deployed the USS Milius guided-missile destroyer inside 12 nautical miles of Mischief Reef, a Manila-owned coral outcrop that China seized in the mid-Nineteen Nineties. The fiercely contested Spratlys archipelago in the China Sea. The U.S. military has been undertaking such “freedom of navigation” operations for years to challenge China’s expansive territorial claims in a busy sea lane.
“So long as some countries insist on and implement restrictions on rights that transcend their authority under international law, the United States will proceed to defend the rights and freedoms at sea guaranteed to all,” the seventh Fleet said. “No member of the international community must be intimidated or forced to provide up their rights and freedoms.”