Tag: Philippines

U.S., Philippines hold largest war drills near disputed waters

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MANILA, Philippines — The United States and the Philippines on Tuesday launch their largest combat exercises in decades that will involve live-fire drills, including a boat-sinking rocket assault in waters across the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait that will likely inflame China.
The annual drills by the longtime treaty allies called Balikatan — Tagalog for shoulder-to-shoulder — will run up to April 28 and involve more than 17,600 military personnel. It will be the latest display of American firepower in Asia, where Washington has repeatedly warned China over its increasingly aggressive actions in the disputed sea channel and against Taiwan.
The Biden administration has been strengthening an arc of alliances in the Indo-Pacific to better counter China, including in a possible confrontation over Taiwan.
That dovetails with efforts by the Philippines under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to defend its territorial interests in the South China Sea by boosting joint military exercises with the U.S. and allowing rotating batches of American forces to stay in more Philippine military camps under a 2014 defense pact.
About 12,200 U.S military personnel, 5,400 Filipino forces and 111 Australian counterparts are taking part in the exercises, the largest in Balikatan’s three-decade history. America’s warships, fighter jets as well as its Patriot missiles, HIMARS rocket launchers and anti-tank Javelins, would be showcased, according to U.S. and Philippine military officials.
“We are not provoking anybody by simply exercising,” Col. Michael Logico, a Philippine spokesman for Balikatan, told reporters ahead of the start of the maneuvers.
“This is actually a form of deterrence,” Logico said. “Deterrence is when we are discouraging other parties from invading us.”
In a live-fire drill the allied forces would stage offshore for the first time, Logico said U.S. and Filipino forces would sink a 200-foot target vessel in Philippine territorial waters off the western province of Zambales this month in a coordinated airstrike and artillery bombardment.

“We will hit it with all the weapons systems that we have, both ground, navy and air,” Logico said.
That location facing the South China Sea and across the waters from the Taiwan Strait would likely alarm China, but Philippine military officials said the maneuver was aimed at bolstering the country’s coastal defense and was not aimed at any country.
Such field scenarios would “test the allies’ capabilities in combined arms live-fire, information and intelligence sharing, communications between maneuver units, logistics operations, amphibious operations,” the U.S. Embassy in Manila said.
Washington and Beijing have been on a collision course over the long-seething territorial disputes involving China, the Philippines and four other governments and Beijing’s goal of annexing Taiwan, by force if necessary.
China last week warned against the intensifying U.S. military deployment to the region. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said in a regular news briefing in Beijing that it “would only lead to more tensions and less peace and stability in the region.”
The Balikatan exercises were opening in the Philippines a day after China concluded three days of combat drills that simulated sealing off Taiwan, following Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s meeting with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last week in California that infuriated Beijing.
On Monday, the U.S. 7th Fleet deployed guided-missile destroyer USS Milius within 12 nautical miles of Mischief Reef, a Manila-claimed coral outcrop which China seized in the mid-1990s and turned into one of seven missile-protected island bases in the South China Sea’s hotly contested Spratlys archipelago. The U.S. military has been undertaking such “freedom of navigation” operations for years to challenge China’s expansive territorial claims in the busy seaway.
“As long as some countries continue to claim and assert limits on rights that exceed their authority under international law, the United States will continue to defend the rights and freedoms of the sea guaranteed to all,” the 7th Fleet said. “No member of the international community should be intimidated or coerced into giving up their rights and freedoms.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 11, 2023
U.S., Philippines hold largest war drills near disputed waters

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That dovetails with efforts by the Philippines under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to defend its territorial interests in the South China Sea by boosting joint military exercises with the U.S. and allowing rotating batches of American forces to stay in more Philippine military camps under a 2014 defense pact.
About 12,200 U.S military personnel, 5,400 Filipino forces and 111 Australian counterparts are taking part in the exercises, the largest in Balikatan’s three-decade history. America’s warships, fighter jets as well as its Patriot missiles, HIMARS rocket launchers and anti-tank Javelins, would be showcased, according to U.S. and Philippine military officials.
“We are not provoking anybody by simply exercising,” Col. Michael Logico, a Philippine spokesman for Balikatan, told reporters ahead of the start of the maneuvers.
“This is actually a form of deterrence,” Logico said. “Deterrence is when we are discouraging other parties from invading us.”
In a live-fire drill the allied forces would stage offshore for the first time, Logico said U.S. and Filipino forces would sink a 200-foot target vessel in Philippine territorial waters off the western province of Zambales this month in a coordinated airstrike and artillery bombardment.
“We will hit it with all the weapons systems that we have, both ground, navy and air,” Logico said.
That location facing the South China Sea and across the waters from the Taiwan Strait would likely alarm China, but Philippine military officials said the maneuver was aimed at bolstering the country’s coastal defense and was not aimed at any country.
Such field scenarios would “test the allies’ capabilities in combined arms live-fire, information and intelligence sharing, communications between maneuver units, logistics operations, amphibious operations,” the U.S. Embassy in Manila said.

Washington and Beijing have been on a collision course over the long-seething territorial disputes involving China, the Philippines and four other governments and Beijing’s goal of annexing Taiwan, by force if necessary.
China last week warned against the intensifying U.S. military deployment to the region. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said in a regular news briefing in Beijing that it “would only lead to more tensions and less peace and stability in the region.”
The Balikatan exercises were opening in the Philippines a day after China concluded three days of combat drills that simulated sealing off Taiwan, following Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s meeting with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last week in California that infuriated Beijing.
On Monday, the U.S. 7th Fleet deployed guided-missile destroyer USS Milius within 12 nautical miles of Mischief Reef, a Manila-claimed coral outcrop which China seized in the mid-1990s and turned into one of seven missile-protected island bases in the South China Sea’s hotly contested Spratlys archipelago. The U.S. military has been undertaking such “freedom of navigation” operations for years to challenge China’s expansive territorial claims in the busy seaway.
“As long as some countries continue to claim and assert limits on rights that exceed their authority under international law, the United States will continue to defend the rights and freedoms of the sea guaranteed to all,” the 7th Fleet said. “No member of the international community should be intimidated or coerced into giving up their rights and freedoms.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 11, 2023
Earthquake of magnitude 6 hits Philippines

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Manila: An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6 rocked the Philippines on Thursday morning, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said.
The institute said the quake, which occurred at 2:10 a.m. local time, hit at a depth of 10 km, about 11 km southwest of Batuan town in Masbate province on the main island of Luzon, Xinhua news agency reported.
The quake was also felt in several areas in Luzon and central Philippines, including Legazpi City in Albay province, Sorsogon, Northern Samar, Negros Occidental, and Southern Leyte, the institute said.
There are no reports of damage or casualties.
The US Geological Survey put the earthquake’s magnitude at 6.1 and a depth of 20 km.
The Philippines has frequent seismic activity due to its location along the Pacific “Ring of Fire”.
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( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

February 16, 2023
U.S., Philippines agree to larger American military presence

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As part of the agreement, the U.S. has allocated $82 million toward infrastructure improvements at five current EDCA sites, and expand its military presence to four new sites in “strategic areas of the country,” according to the statement.
Austin arrived in the Philippines on Tuesday from South Korea, where he said the U.S. would increase its deployment of advanced weapons such as fighter jets and bombers to the Korean Peninsula to bolster joint training with South Korean forces in response to North Korea’s growing nuclear threat.
In the Philippines, Washington’s oldest treaty ally in Asia and a key front in the U.S. battle against terrorism, Austin visited southern Zamboanga city and met Filipino generals and a small contingent of U.S. counterterrorism forces based in a local military camp, regional Philippine military commander Lt. Gen. Roy Galido said. The more than 100 U.S. military personnel have provided intelligence and combat advice for years to Filipino troops battling a decades-long Muslim insurgency, which has considerably eased but remains a key threat.
More recently, U.S. forces have intensified and broadened joint training focusing on combat readiness and disaster response with Filipino troops on the nation’s western coast, which faces the South China Sea, and in its northern Luzon region across the sea from the Taiwan Strait.
American forces were granted access to five Philippine military camps, where they could rotate indefinitely under the 2014 EDCA defense pact.
In October, the U.S. sought access for a larger number of its forces and weapons in an additional five military camps, mostly in the north. That request would be high on the agenda in Austin’s meetings, according to Philippine officials.
“The visit of Secretary Austin definitely, obviously will have to do with many of the ongoing discussions on the EDCA sites,” Philippine Ambassador to Washington Jose Romualdez said at a news briefing.
Austin was scheduled to hold talks Thursday with his Philippine counterpart, Carlito Galvez Jr., and National Security Adviser Eduardo Ano, Romualdez said. Austin will separately call on President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who took office in June and has since taken steps to boost relations with Washington.

The U.S. defense chief is the latest senior official to visit the Philippines after Vice President Kamala Harris in November in a sign of warming ties after a strained period under Marcos’s predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte.
Duterte had nurtured cozy ties with China and Russia and at one point threatened to sever ties with Washington, kick visiting American forces out and abrogate a major defense pact.
Romualdez said the Philippines needed to cooperate with Washington to deter any escalation of tensions between China and self-ruled Taiwan — not only because of the treaty alliance but to help prevent a major conflict.
“We’re in a Catch-22 situation. If China makes a move on Taiwan militarily, we’ll be affected — and all ASEAN region, but mostly us, Japan and South Korea,” Romualdez told The Associated Press, referring to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the 10-nation regional bloc that includes the Philippines.
The Philippines and ASEAN members Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam, along with Taiwan, have been locked in increasingly tense territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea. The U.S. has been regarded as a crucial counterweight to China in the region and has pledged to come to the defense of the Philippines if Filipino forces, ships or aircraft come under attack in the contested waters.
The Philippines used to host two of the largest U.S. Navy and Air Force bases outside the American mainland. The bases were shut down in the early 1990s after the Philippine Senate rejected an extension, but American forces returned for large-scale combat exercises with Filipino troops under a 1999 Visiting Forces Agreement.
The Philippine Constitution prohibits the permanent basing of foreign troops and their involvement in local combat.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 2, 2023
Teenage pregnancy in Philippines declines in past 5 yrs

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Manila: Teenage pregnancy among girls aged 15 to 19 in the Philippines declined to 5.4 percent in 2022 from 8.6 percent in 2017, according to official data.
The data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed that teenage pregnancy was lower in urban areas at 4.8 percent than in rural areas at 6.1 percent, reports Xinhua news agency.
The 19-year-olds had the highest pregnancy percentage.
In terms of educational attainment, teenage pregnancy was most common among those with primary education, standing at 19.1 percent.
The percentage of teenage pregnancy decreases as educational attainment increases.
The Philippines has been grappling with teenage pregnancy over the past decade, which is a “national social emergency”.
Some officials had warned that adolescent birth rates had hovered at a level that merited “national concern”.
According to official data, teenage pregnancy has a mortality rate two to five times higher than adults.

The neonatal death rate of babies born to young mothers are three times higher than that of babies born to mothers aged 25 to 29.
Meanwhile, this social problem could also trap a large cross-section of families in perpetual cycle of intergenerational poverty, officials warned.
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( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

January 23, 2023