Largest US-PH 'Balikatan'

LARGEST US-PH 'BALIKATAN'

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. It will involve more than 17,600 military personnel and showcase the latest in US artillery. 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 US and allowing rotating batches of American forces to stay in more Philippine military camps under a 2014 defense pact.

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