Troops from Hawaii-based military units have been in the Philippines for a marathon series of training exercises since April as U.S. forces refine their Pacific strategy and test out new weapons in the region.
Earlier this month during the international Exercise Balikatan, the commander of the Schofield Barracks-based 25th Infantry Division stood on a beach in western Luzon after a live fire “counter landing” drill that brought together troops from the American, Philippine and Japanese militaries as they practiced protecting a coastline from invading forces.
“It’s important that we’re prepared to support and respond,” Maj. Gen. James Bartholomees told reporters who watched the exercise. “We understand this as the 25th division, because my division was born in the Hawaiian Islands nearly 85 years ago. Three months after the 25th Infantry Division was formed, it was attacked on (Dec. 7, 1941). And since then, we prepared to fight on islands, to lead from islands and to fight forward.”
Balikatan, which was once a relatively modest joint exercise between the U.S. and Philippine militaries, has grown into a multinational exercise that gets larger every year. This year more than 17,000 troops are taking part, including active participation from Australia, Japan, Canada, France and New Zealand along with military observers from 17 other countries.
As it came to a close on May 8, Adm. Samuel Paparo, the Oahu-based commander of all American Pacific forces, said that “Balikatan 2026 marks a strategic evolution from a bilateral exercise to a full scale multinational mission, rehearsal for the defense of the Republic of the Philippines. This growth reflects the dangerous security environment we live in, and it also requests the sovereign choices of partner nations.”
“The side that sees faster, decides faster, moves faster, learns faster, gains the advantage,” said Paparo. “Balikatan 26 made us faster and better, and this is war fighting in the 21st Century.”
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Hawaii-based troops have remained on the ground after Balikatan as they go deeper in on training with Philippine forces.
Army troops from Schofield are training with Philippine Army troops as part of the follow up Exercise Salaknib, while Kaneohe-based Marines are still in the country training with the Philippine Marine Corps in exercise Kamandag where they are training together with new drone systems, missiles, AI and other tech.
“This is the modernization of our joint forces,” said Bartholomees. “This is how we prevail in the Pacific under Adm. Paparo’s vision, and all of this got to come together in a live fire, since this is where you get to really prove that you can do what you say you’re going to do.”
While U.S. troops left permanent bases in the country in the 1990s after nationalist protests led to their eviction, training rotations by American forces and now those from other countries have increased amid tensions with China along with port calls by warships. Last year President Donald Trump and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. announced plans for Subic Bay to become a new arms manufacturing hub.
Response to China
Brad Glosserman, a senior adviser at the Honolulu-based policy think tank Pacific Forum, said that “I think one of the most intriguing developments in recent years is the strengthening of the U.S.-Philippines relationship in general, and the way that it’s become sort of a pivot for engagement with a bunch of other countries (like) Japan, Australia, South Korea (and other) U.S. allies.”
“I think the interesting piece about Balikatan is that it’s evidence of precisely this new role that the Philippines and the U.S.-Philippine alliance is playing for regional security, and that’s key, of course, because of location,” he continued. “I think what you see is the Philippines emerging as far closer to the center of regional security policy, where it’s long been on the periphery.”
The Philippines is among the most likely staging areas the U.S. military would seek to use if it were to respond to a Chinese blockade or invasion of Taiwan. During Balikatan, American soldiers and Marines brought long-range missile systems to the Philippines’ Batanes islands just south of Taiwan.
Meanwhile, Beijing claims the entire South China Sea as its exclusive sovereign territory, over the objections of its neighbors. One third of all international trade moves through the critical waterway. China and the Philippines in particular have wrangled over navigation and territorial rights around islands and reefs in a part of the South China Sea the Philippines calls the West Philippine Sea and claims as its territory.
In 2016 an international court ruled in favor of Manila, concluding that Beijing’s claims have “no legal basis.” But China dismissed the ruling and has built bases on many of the disputed reefs and islands. Chinese vessels now routinely attack Filipino fishermen, as well as scientists trying to study the environmental impacts of Chinese operations, charging at and ramming their boats and firing high-pressure water cannons at them.
China for its part has accused the Philippines of provocation and condemned the growing involvement of the U.S. and its allies in military operations around the Philippines, accusing them of interfering in the dispute and ratcheting up tensions.
For most of its history the Philippine military’s main focus was “internal security” operations tracking down various rebel groups. But as tensions with China simmer, Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. announced that he wanted the country’s forces to shift toward external territorial defense looking out from the coastlines.
The Philippine military’s top officer, Gen. Romeo Brawner, said “we have plans of procuring more of the missile systems that we saw recently used here in the Balikatan exercise, that is the future direction of the Armed Forces of the Philippines as we modernize our capabilities.”
Brawner, an alum of the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies in Waikiki, said “if you look at the modern warfare happening now between Ukraine and Russia, and in the Middle East between the United States and Iran, Israel against Hezbollah, we see the heavy use of missile systems, of drones … in order for us to be able to have that capability to defend our archipelago from attacks, possible attacks from outside, then we will have to have (these) types of weapons.”
Economic impact
But Philippine officials aren’t just watching fighting in the Middle East to study military tactics. The economic consequences of the war are also rippling into the Pacific, complicating American operations and coalition building efforts in the region.
The Philippines gets 96% of its oil from the Persian Gulf. After U.S. and Israeli forces began bombing Iran, Iranian forces and Tehran-backed militant groups in the region retaliated with strikes that have targeted oil infrastructure, ports and merchant vessels.
As the U.S. and Iran now engage in tense negotiations the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial choke point for global oil supplies, remains essentially shut down. President Donald Trump has criticized both NATO countries as well as Pacific allies Japan, Australia and South Korea for not joining U.S. military operations in the strait.
As Balikatan kicked off, the International Committee for Human Rights said in statement that holding these exercises “in the context of a global fuel crisis caused by the unprovoked aggression of the U.S.-Israel attacks on Iran is a slap in the face to Filipinos already suffering so much from the impacts of the U.S.-led war.”
“Through this crisis the average Filipino has struggled to get to work, struggled to pay for cooking fuel, and struggled with the spiraling inflation and increasing price of basic commodities,” the group charged. “The militaries of the Philippines, U.S., Australia, Japan, Canada, France and New Zealand will indulge in massive fuel consumption to power their naval vessels, jets and other equipment in the midst of the worst fuel crisis since (World War II).”
During this year’s Balikatan, Japanese forces participated in live-fire training for the first time in the exercise. It comes off the heels of Tokyo loosening export controls on weapons as Japan has continued a pivot from the pacifist foreign policy it has mostly embraced since its defeat in World War II.
“I think, a powerful demonstration of intent and the readiness of Japan to do more for regional security,” said Glosserman. “That’s part of a long-standing process that has been part of the goal of conservative governments in Japan for over a decade.”
Glosserman added that while the training took place in the Philippines, much of the coordination between those countries took place here in Hawaii at the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command at Camp Smith, the nerve center of all U.S. military operations in the region.
“You’ve got so many of those same governments that are here with representatives and liaisons up at Camp Smith, and throughout the various commands,” said Glosserman. “So this becomes an expression of precisely the thickening weave of security relations that are in the region”
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Freelance photojournalist Edward Bungubung contributed to this report