Troops from the Philippine Marine Corps (PMC), together with United States Marine Corps (USMC) and Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel, conducted a counter-landing and live fire exercise at the beach of Barangay Campong Ulay in Rizal town as part of the ongoing Exercise Balikatan 40-2025 on Monday, April 28.
Around 500 officers and personnel of the combined forces participated in the exercise, which the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) described as a “major milestone in our commitment to regional security, cooperation, and interoperability,” bringing together troops.
Japan Self-Defense Force and United Kingdom military personnel were also present during the activity as observers.
The exercise featured defense positioning conducted by the troops to prevent invasion by enemies coming from the sea.
Several high-powered equipment were used in the live fire exercise, including the Philippine Navy’s Multi-Purpose Attack Craft (MPAC) Spike-ER Missile System; Fast Attack Interdiction Craft Missile or FAIC-M; 105mm Howitzer Artillery; 40mm BOFOR anti-aircraft guns with LAV (V-150) armed with 60LMG and the LAV (V-300); Javelin Anti-Tank Guided Missiles; Squad Rocket Launcher Light; and Multi-Role Anti-Armor Anti-Personnel Weapon, along with several light and heavy machine guns.
The US troops also launched six rounds of inert missiles from the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) as the highlight of the exercise.
Officials present during the activity, however, said that while the exercise was held facing the West Philippine Sea, it has nothing to do with the current situation in the area, noting that the activity is part of their commitment to regional security, cooperation, and interoperability.
3rd Marine Brigade (3MBde) commander Brig. Gen. Antonio Mangoroban Jr. said the exercise is not related to the issue in the WPS, stating that the activity is done by a “community of like-minded nations pursuing a rules-based international order.”
“There’s a little bit of a problem but I don’t think it is related. We planned this independently, without taking into considerations what are our issues as a country. So I think this is a totally different agenda we have with the US and other partner countries,” Mangoroban said.
USMC 1st Marine Division commanding general, Maj. Gen. Thomas Savage, likewise said Balikatan is an exercise that the Philippines and the USA have been doing for the last 40 years, which he described as a “huge opportunity” for them to further develop partnership and to demonstrate combined multi-domain capability.
Savage added that for 72 years now, the Philippines and the US are bound by the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT), to which the exercise is also about helping the Philippines defend its sovereignty.
“We’re here as equal partners and this is about like-minded community that want to keep an open and free Indo-Pacific (region),” he said.
He said the MDT works both ways “o if something happens to the United States, we may call on our Philippine partners to come and help us.”
He also agreed with Mangoroban, saying the exercise is not specifically aimed against anyone in particular.
“We’re trying to demonstrate a capability to work together. The exercise you saw here today is agnostic of an enemy – if somebody is trying to interfere with a sovereign nation, that’s what we’re trying to demonstrate,” he explained.
Savage also said they were able to do what they intended to achieve.
“There are two things we wanted to get out of this – make sure that we could exercise a combined arms, multi-domain capabilities which we did and also keep this safe,” he said.
“Not perfect, but we’ll get better next year, everytime we do it, that’s why we do this things, to work well together,” he added.
He also explained that compared to the Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS) deployed in Northern Luzon, which is a land-based high mobility antiship missile system, HIMARS is not specifically designed as an anti-ship missile system.
“The NMESIS is specifically designed as surface-to-sea missile to take out a ship. HIMARS is not necessarily designed for that capability (but) there may be ways to modify that to make that capability. What you saw here simply precision long range fires from a platform normally from land,” he said.
