The US and the Philippines launch joint military exercises in Balikatan in the South China Sea

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The Philippines and the US on Monday began three-week military exercises that will further strain the countries’ relations with China.

This year’s staging of Balikatan, the allies’ largest annual military exercise, includes a joint sail in the disputed South China Sea outside the Philippines’ territorial waters. The French Navy, participating for the first time in Balikatan, and the Australian Navy will also join the maneuvers.

While the US and the Philippines resumed joint naval patrols in the area last year, and the US has sailed there with other allies and partners in the past, it will be the first time the Balikatan exercises extend beyond 12 nautical miles off the Philippine coast. coast and in waters claimed by China.

Beijing claims the South China Sea almost in its entirety, despite a 2016 arbitration ruling that rejected key elements of its claims and found that many of its uses of the waters violated Manila’s rights under the U.N. -Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Six Philippine Coast Guard ships will also participate in the exercise. It is the first time the service – which has been at the forefront of frequent clashes with China over the past year – has been included in a military exercise.

Chinese coast guard ships have used increasingly violent means, such as water cannons, to disrupt regular supply missions from Manila to a naval post on a former warship stranded on Second Thomas Shoal. The shoal is in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, but China claims sovereignty over it.

In a reference to Balikatan, China’s Foreign Ministry last week warned the Philippines that “handing over your security to forces outside the region will only increase insecurity and turn yourself into someone else’s chess piece.”

Col. Michael Logico, director of the Philippine Army Joint and Combined Training Center, said every country has the right to defend itself. “We are not deterred by what other countries think about what we do,” he added.

Another closely watched component of the exercises is the Strategic Mid-Range Fires missile system, known as Typhon, which has a range of up to 2,500 km. The US military airlifted the system to the Philippines this month, the first time it has been deployed in the Indo-Pacific. Intermediate-range surface-to-surface missiles were banned under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, but the pact collapsed in 2019 after both the US and Russia left it.

U.S. and Philippine officials said Balikatan would only organize logistics exercises with the Typhon, such as quickly relocating the launch system when danger threatens, but that no launches would take place.

Troops will also practice tracking and targeting air and missile threats, recapturing enemy-held islands in the far north of the Philippines, just south of Taiwan, and sinking a ship off the coast overlooking in the South China Sea, with exercises expanded last year.

The 2023 exercises marked a significant expansion and deepening of the Philippine-US military alliance, doubling the number of troops participating and for the first time including islands near Taiwan, which have been considered too sensitive in the past. It also included Philippine bases to which U.S. forces had only recently gained access.

This year’s exercise, involving nearly 17,000 soldiers, will be about the same size, but Lt. Gen. William Jurney, commander of the U.S. Marines in the Pacific, called it the “most extensive yet” because the exercises will be more complex are.

The exercise coincides with an annual conference of the Chinese Navy, which will be attended by senior military officers, including from the US. It also comes as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken heads to China on Wednesday in the two countries’ latest attempt to manage strained relations.