MANILA, Philippines — The United States and the Philippines on Tuesday begin their biggest combat exercise in a long time, which can include live fire drills including a boat-sinking missile strike in the waters of the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait that’s prone to incinerate China.
The annual exercise by long-time treaty allies, often called Balikatan – “shoulder to shoulder” in Tagalog – will last until April 28 and involve greater than 17,600 troops.
It should 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 higher 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 parties of US forces to stay in additional Philippine military camps as a part of a defense pact with the US 2014 .
The exercise, the largest in Balikatan’s thirty-year history, involves some 12,200 US troops, 5,400 Filipino forces and 111 Australian counterparts.
![U.S. Marine personnel gesticulate in the flight deck of the USS America (LHA 6) during a scheduled port visit in Manila, Philippines.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/AP23080203631347.jpg?w=1024)
US warships, fighter jets, in addition to Patriot missiles, HIMARS missile launchers and anti-tank javelins will likely be on display, in accordance with US and Philippine military officials.
“We usually are not frightening 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 about discouraging other parties from invading us.”
Logico said that in a live fire exercise, allied forces would expose themselves at sea for the first time, U.S. and Philippine forces will sink a 200-foot goal ship in Philippine territorial waters off western Zambales province this month in a coordinated airstrike and artillery bombardment.
![Philippine Army Artillery Regimental Commander Anthony Coronel, left, salutes a U.S. soldier during a joint military exercise called Salaknib in Laur, Nueva Ecija Province, northern Philippines, March 31, 2023.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/AP23090539874082.jpg?w=1024)
“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 geared toward any country.
Such field scenarios “would test allies’ capabilities in combined arms, information and intelligence sharing, communication between maneuver units, logistics operations, amphibious operations,” the U.S. Embassy in Manila said.
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 vital.
![The Arleigh Burke-class USS Milius (DDG 69) guided missile destroyer is sailing in the Philippine Sea.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/AP23082190720937.jpg?w=1024)
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 “this may 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-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 ought to be intimidated or forced to offer up their rights and freedoms.”