Manila, Philippines — The U.S. military is introducing joint battlefield training in the Philippines to improve combat readiness, including ensuring adequate ammunition and other needs in difficult conditions in tropical jungles and on scattered islands, a U.S. general said.
The Biden administration has strengthened a series of military alliances in the Indo-Pacific to better counter China, including in any future confrontation over Taiwan. The US moves are in line with the Philippines’ efforts to strengthen its territorial defense amid disputes with China in the South China Sea and its ability to respond to frequent natural disasters.
About 2,000 U.S. and Philippine military forces will take part in the days-long combat exercises in June, supported by helicopters and artillery fire against armed opponents in a jungle environment in the northern Philippines. Maj. Gen. Marcus Evans, commanding general of the U.S. Army’s 25th Infantry Division, said Sunday.
The combat training will be held in the Philippines for the first time at the request of Manila. It is not clear whether the treaty’s longtime allies would decide to make the maneuvers an annual exercise, Evans said.
The June 1-10 exercises conclude two larger back-to-back exercises between allied forces: the Salaknib army-to-army exercises, which started on Monday, and the Balikatan, which will start later in April will start. approximately 16,000 American and Philippine troops. Several countries, including Japan, will send observers.
“We need to be prepared to respond to humanitarian crises and natural disasters, and that’s what this training gives us the opportunity to do,” Evans told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “While we are confident in our overall preparedness and training trajectory, it is something we can never be complacent about.”
The June combat readiness exercise “provides us with an excellent opportunity to improve in terms of our warfighting readiness, to strengthen our partnership and then strengthen our Army profession by working together in a very challenging environment,” Evans said.
The training was intended to be conducted live to demonstrate, for example, how much ammunition, walkie-talkie batteries and food the U.S. and Philippine forces would carry and how they planned to resupply on a remote battlefield.
“It’s really a way for soldiers, leaders and units to be able to see themselves in a simulated combat scenario,” Evans said.
Such past combat training in Hawaii has led to better information sharing by smaller and more agile combat units and improved combat endurance, he said. It strengthened “the ability to sustain ourselves in a jungle and archipelago environment, because there are no ground connections, so we have to rely heavily on air or maritime assets to be able to move supplies.”
China has strongly opposed the increasing deployment of US troops in Asia, including the Philippines, saying such a military presence endangers regional harmony and stability.
Last year, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. defended his decision to allow U.S. military presence in more Philippine military camps under a 2014 defense pact, saying it was critical to his country’s territorial defense.
China had warned that the increased US military presence would “drag the Philippines into the abyss of geopolitical strife.”