A powerful anti-ship missile system from the United States Marine Corps has reached the Philippine shores and will be seeing action in the upcoming Balikatan Exercise next week, a ranking military official confirmed Tuesday, April 15.
Brig. Gen. Michael Logico, Balikatan assistant exercise director, said the Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS) arrived in the country on Monday, April 14. He, however, did not reveal where it is currently positioned for security purposes.
“The NMESIS, I will confirm that it's already in [the] country. I will not say where, but it is going to participate. It's going to be part of the exercises,” Logico said in a press conference at Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City.
According to the US Marine Corps, the NMESIS is a mountable, ground-based anti-ship missile launcher.
It was US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth who first revealed that the NMESIS would be deployed to the Philippines during his visit to Manila last March 28.
He said the deployment will enable US forces and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) “to train together on using advanced capabilities to defend the Philippines’ sovereignty.”
This year’s Balikatan is slated to kick off on April 21 and will run until May 9. Around 14,000 personnel will participate in the exercise: 5,000 from the AFP and 9,000 from the US armed forces.
There are also 200 active participants from Australia, and international observers from Brunei, Canada, Czech Republic, Columbia, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Lithuania, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Thailand, United Kingdom, and Vietnam.
The exercise will feature key events such as combined joint all-domain operations, integrated air missile defense, counter-landing live fire exercise, maritime strike, maritime key terrain security operations, a multilateral maritime event, and a number of humanitarian and civic assistance activities.
What’s new in the 40th iteration of the Balikatan is the conduct of a “full battle test” at different locations in the country.
In previous iterations of Balikatan, Filipino and American soldiers treat field training exercises and command post exercises as two separate events. This year, the AFP and US armed forces will combine the two exercises for a full battle test.
“It's like a war plan being tested,” said Colonel Doug Krugman, a senior exercise planner for Balikatan 2025.
“In the past, the field training exercise occurred with tactical units, great valuable training in the field, and the command post exercise occurred with the higher headquarters, and they were essentially conducted as two separate events,” he explained.
“In the case of the full battle test, we are integrating those events so the command post exercise is actually providing command and control and the field training event you see are actually integrated to a scenario alongside a large number of virtual forces in the simulation. And those two elements merge together, combined, provide us that full battle test for both of our joint task force headquarters staff,” he added.
For Logico, a full battle test is a gauge of how the AFP and US armed forces will react in case of a large-scale conflict.
“When we are talking about the full battle test, we are now treating exercises as rehearsals. So we are implementing a plan that has been planned out in the previous Balikatan and that is what we are going to execute for this time,” Logico said.
Meanwhile, aside from NMESIS, the US Army’s mid-range capability (MRC) missile system will also be used for Balikatan.
After Balikatan, the NMESIS is expected to be parked in the country for future utilization just like the MRC, according to Krugman.
“If there's another exercise going in the Philippines shortly after Balikatan and that equipment is appropriate and requested for by the AFP, we would certainly want to participate in that exercise as well, but it is here for exercise purposes,” Krugman said.