Overview
- Balikatan, which opened Monday, brings more than 17,000 personnel with about 10,000 U.S. troops for live‑fire and joint maneuvers across northern and western Philippines.
- Japan joins as a full participant for the first time with roughly 1,400 personnel, ships and aircraft, and plans a Type 88 anti‑ship missile test to sink a target off Ilocos Norte.
- The schedule includes maritime strike training on Itbayat, the Philippines’ northernmost island about 155 km from Taiwan, plus air and missile defense and counter‑landing drills in Zambales near the South China Sea.
- After a Japanese destroyer crossed the Taiwan Strait on Friday, China dispatched a Baotou‑led warship group through the Yokoate Waterway into the Western Pacific for what it calls routine far‑seas training.
- Beijing warned the allied exercises could erode regional trust, and Tokyo protested new Chinese construction in the East China Sea, keeping tensions high as the three‑week drills proceed.