US and Philippines Open Their Largest Joint Military Exercise in Decades
The Philippines and the United States have launched Balikatan 2025, their biggest combined military drills in more than three decades, with approximately 17,000 personnel taking part in live-fire exercises, amphibious landings, and urban combat training across multiple Philippine provinces. The manoeuvres, which run through early May, mark a significant escalation in the alliance's operational tempo and include participation from observers from Australia, Japan, France, and several Southeast Asian nations. Manila has framed the exercise as a defensive response to growing pressure in contested waters, while Beijing has labelled it a provocation that risks regional stability.
For Australia, the timing carries particular weight. Canberra sits at the heart of the Indo-Pacific security architecture through the AUKUS partnership and the Quad grouping, and the drills come amid heightened concerns about assertive behaviour near Taiwan and within the South China Sea. The exercises also unfold against a backdrop of broader global instability, from energy infrastructure strikes documented in Russia's aerial campaign against Ukrainian power facilities to environmental pressures tracked across the Amazon basin, reflecting how security concerns now extend well beyond traditional battlefields.
Domestic attention in Australia has been steady but measured. Defence analysts in Canberra and Sydney have noted that the exercise validates the strategic logic underpinning Australia's 2024 National Defence Strategy, which called for greater integration with regional partners. The drills also serve as a visible test of the kinds of combined operations that Australian forces are increasingly expected to participate in alongside American and Filipino counterparts.
Scale and Reach of the Combined Operations
Balikatan 2025 spans land, sea, air, cyber, and space domains, with roughly 14,000 American service members and around 5,000 Filipino troops operating across Luzon and the waters near Palawan. New elements this year include HIMARS rocket system firings, maritime strike drills using naval guns and anti-ship missiles, and joint humanitarian assistance scenarios designed to simulate responses to typhoons and major disasters. Four newly designated Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement sites, agreed in 2023, now host rotating US forces and were partially incorporated into the exercise footprint.
Compared with earlier iterations, the inclusion of French Marines from New Caledonia and Japanese Self-Defense Force observers signals an expanding multilateral dimension. Philippine Marine Corps public affairs officers have emphasised that the scenarios reflect real-world contingencies rather than rehearsed symbolism, including island-seizure and territorial defence drills that echo concerns over Scarborough Shoal and the Second Thomas Shoal.
Pressure Points in the South China Sea
The waters where Balikatan takes place sit astride some of the world's most contested shipping lanes, through which more than $3 trillion of trade passes each year. China claims historic rights over roughly 90 percent of the South China Sea, a position rejected by the 2016 arbitral ruling in The Hague, and has continued to build artificial islands, deploy coast guard vessels, and confront Philippine resupply missions near contested reefs. Recent months have seen a sharp rise in water-cannon incidents and dangerous manoeuvres at Second Thomas Shoal, raising the risk of miscalculation.
Australian officials have repeatedly criticised coercive behaviour in these waters, including Foreign Minister Penny Wong's statement earlier this year that dangerous actions by the Chinese coast guard threaten regional peace. For Australian exporters of iron ore, coal, and liquefied natural gas, the legal status of sea lanes through the South China Sea is not an abstract issue. Any disruption would hit the Port Hedland, Newcastle, and Gladstone shipping routes almost immediately.
Australia's Strategic Calculations
Australian involvement in this year's Balikatan is limited to a small number of embedded observers, but the country's broader posture is shifting rapidly. The AUKUS agreement, signed in 2021 and now in its second phase, commits Australia to acquiring nuclear-powered submarines and deepening interoperability with the United States and the United Kingdom. The Royal Australian Navy has already begun rotating crews through American submarine facilities in Guam, while Darwin continues to host the annual Marine Rotational Force-Darwin deployment that brings up to 2,500 US Marines to the Top End each dry season.
The Australian Defence Strategic Review of 2023 identified the prospect of high-intensity conflict in the Indo-Pacific as the central planning assumption for the next decade, a sentiment reinforced by the 2024 National Defence Strategy. Recent federal budget allocations have lifted defence spending toward 2.4 percent of GDP by 2030, with a focus on long-range strike, undersea warfare, and integrated air defence. Watching how the Philippines and the United States integrate new domains such as cyber and space offers Canberra a useful benchmark for its own joint-force experiments.
Regional Reactions and Diplomatic Friction
Beijing has lodged formal diplomatic complaints through its embassy in Manila, describing the exercise as a thinly veiled rehearsal for intervention in the Taiwan Strait. Chinese state media have warned that the drills could undermine the recent thaw in Manila-Beijing relations, while the People's Liberation Army Southern Theater Command conducted simultaneous naval exercises in the same general region, including live-fire drills near Hainan Island.
Other regional capitals have been more measured. Tokyo has quietly welcomed the expanded Japanese observer role, seeing the activity as aligned with its own efforts to deepen security ties with Southeast Asia. Singapore, Jakarta, and Hanoi have urged restraint and respect for international law, including the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, without publicly endorsing the exercise. Within the Philippines, public opinion polls show around 70 percent support for the alliance, though domestic debate continues over the presence of US forces on Philippine soil.
Comparing This Year's Drill to Earlier Editions
The exercise has grown steadily in scope since it resumed full scale in 2022 following pandemic-era restrictions. Each annual iteration has added new domains, more sophisticated weapons, and broader international participation, reflecting Manila's strategic pivot toward external defence after decades of internal security focus.
| Exercise | Personnel | Notable Features | Major Locations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Balikatan 2023 | ~17,600 | First iteration with EDCA sites fully integrated; cyber defence added | Luzon, Palawan |
| Balikatan 2024 | ~16,000 | Expanded maritime strike training; new HIMARS live-fire zones | Northern Luzon, West Philippine Sea |
| Balikatan 2025 | ~17,000 | First-time French and Japanese observers; island-seizure and humanitarian scenarios | Luzon, Palawan, near Scarborough Shoal |
Observers in Washington and Tokyo have publicly described the latest Balikatan as a model for combined deterrence in the region, while critics within the Philippines warn that deeper US involvement could entangle the country in a wider conflict.
What Australian Readers Should Watch Next
The coming weeks will offer several signals about how the alliance continues to evolve, and how Australia's own posture may need to adapt in response.
- Trilateral announcements between the United States, the Philippines, and Japan that could include joint patrols or shared intelligence arrangements
- Updates on the four EDCA sites, particularly the northernmost location on the island of Itbayat, closest to Taiwan
- Statements from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs following the exercise, which may signal whether tensions will escalate or cool
- Australian Senate estimates hearings, where defence officials are likely to be questioned about AUKUS progress and regional posture
- Budget outcomes tied to the National Defence Strategy, especially funding for the Indo-Pacific Stabilisation Fund
- Reports from the upcoming Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, where regional defence ministers will gather in June
- Movements of the PLA Navy near the exercise areas, which the Philippine Coast Guard and joint task forces are closely monitoring
Several of these indicators will shape decisions about AUKUS timelines, rotational deployments to Darwin, and the future size of the Australian Army's amphibious component based around Lavarack Barracks in Townsville.