A Balikatan first: Philippine-US war games to boost external defence, cybersecurity capabilities
- The drills will feature precise combat scenarios and cyber defence exercise, among others, in a show of ‘joint and equal partnership’ between the military allies
- Aim of ‘littoral live-fire’ drills is to ward off attacks by a fictitious country, but one analyst says that can only be China
While the bulk of the 17,600 combined forces – 12,200 American and 5,400 Filipino soldiers – will train for 17 days, a “few” US military officers will stay for two months to attend to logistics of sending home troops and equipment and to plan the next cycle of exercises with local counterparts, building on the lessons learned from the current one.
“For the vast majority of participants, they are here for one month or less,” said Alexander Cornell du Houx, a US Navy public affairs officer, in an interview with This Week in Asia on April 12.
Besides having nearly twice the number of troops training a week longer than the two-week exercises last year, the current war drills contain several firsts, according to military officials.
Unlike previous exercises which emphasised HADR or humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations by both forces, these drills have a laser-focus on precise combat scenarios.
Northern Luzon deputy military commander for training Lieutenant Colonel Loel Egos asked residents to remain calm, and said the soldiers would be enacting “a scenario where the island gets occupied by a fictitious country and the training troops take it back”.