Military forces from Australia, Canada, Malaysia and the U.S., fired upon and sank a decommissioned guided-missile frigate during the Rim of the Pacific exercise off Hawaii in July 2022. (U.S. Navy)
U.S. and Philippine forces will sink a target vessel off the western coast of Luzon during “shoulder-to-shoulder” drills next month, according to U.S. and Philippine officials.
U.S. forces are arriving in the Philippines ahead of the annual Balikatan drills April 11 to 28, the government-run Philippine News Agency reported March 16.
The exercise will involve 12,000 American and 5,000 Filipino troops along with about 100 Australians and observers from Japan and South Korea. That’s nearly twice the 8,900 soldiers who joined last year, according to the agency.
U.S. and Philippine forces plan to sink a decommissioned fishing boat off Luzon near disputed waters of the South China Sea, the agency announced March 15.
Sailors with Amphibious Construction Battalion 1, preparing for the Balikatan exercise in April, unload cases of water at Casiguran, Philippines, March 23, 2023. (Brianna Curley/U.S. Navy)
During the Rim of the Pacific exercise off Hawaii last year, military forces from Australia, Canada, Malaysia and the U.S., fired upon and sank a decommissioned guided-missile frigate, the former USS Rodney M. Davis, according to information and photographs from the Navy in July 2022.
Balikatan’s at-sea live fire, scheduled toward the end of the drills, is a first for an exercise that previously took place mostly on land, U.S. Marine Maj. George McArthur said in an email Tuesday.
A 200-foot-long target vessel will be afloat in waters near the Naval Education, Training and Doctrine Command in San Antonio, Zambales, on Luzon, the Philippines’ main island, Philippine army Col. Michael Logico told reporters March 15, according to the Philippine News Agency.
Soldiers will fire at it from shore with a U.S. High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, and Philippine weapons, he said.
“We will tow it out into the water, and we will hit it with all the weapons systems that we have, both ground, navy and air,” Logico was quoted as saying.
San Antonio is about 140 miles from Scarborough Shoal, a disputed feature in the South China Sea. In 2016, an international court ruled for the Philippines in a dispute about fishing access to the shoal, but China has ignored the ruling.
Balikatan is not meant to provoke anyone, Logico said.
“I can do anything I want within my territorial land, within my territorial waters, so this is not a provocation,” he said.
The training is a clear, visible sign of increasingly close cooperation between the U.S. and Philippine militaries after minimal cooperation over the past decade, former U.S. Navy Capt. Jan van Tol said in an email Tuesday.
Using HIMARS against a target at sea is also significant since ground-based, antiship strike is a mission the Marines are focused on, he said.
“The choice of location is significant,” he said. “Though the SINKEX will be conducted relatively close to Luzon, HIMARS has the range to strike the Scarborough Shoal area (as well as targets in the Spratly Islands if fired from a different location in the Philippines).”
The demonstration will show the ability to strike maritime or island targets from shore, van Tol said.
“The PLA (China’s People’s Liberation Army) can draw its own conclusions from what it observes,” he said.
The exercise will test and demonstrate Philippine forces’ ability to engage in more complex targeting and cooperation with the U.S., Ian Chong, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore, said in an email Tuesday.
“The exercise could in principle (prepare forces) to react to any surface vessel threat to the Philippines,” he said.
