The United States and the Philippines opened the 2025 edition of their annual Balikatan — meaning "Shoulder-to-Shoulder" — military exercises on Monday, with officials describing this year's drills as the largest in the event's history. More than 17,000 troops from the Philippines, the United States, Japan, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and France are participating in the 19-day exercises, which are spread across the Philippine archipelago. Around 10,000 of those personnel are American, according to US Lieutenant General Christian Wortman, commander of the Marine Expeditionary Force, who spoke at the opening ceremony at Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City, Metro Manila.

The drills will include live-fire exercises, integrated air and missile defence training, and maritime security operations. In one high-profile drill, Japan — participating as a full partner for the first time following a reciprocal access agreement ratified by the Japanese parliament last year — will use a Type 88 cruise missile to sink a decommissioned World War II-era minesweeper off the coast of northern Luzon island. Coastal defence exercises are also planned in the Batanes island chain, the Philippines' northernmost territory, which lies fewer than 200 kilometres from Taiwan's southern coast. A US Typhon ground-based missile system, which has remained in the Philippines since 2024, is also expected to feature in the exercises, a move that has previously drawn sharp protest from Beijing.

The exercises take place against a backdrop of heightened regional tension. China has intensified military pressure on Taiwan, which it claims as its own territory, and Philippine and Chinese vessels have repeatedly clashed in the disputed South China Sea. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos has previously warned that a conflict over Taiwan could involuntarily draw his country in. Meanwhile, the drills are unfolding as a ceasefire in the Middle East — following US and Israeli strikes on Iran — approaches its end, raising questions about Washington's bandwidth in the Indo-Pacific. Wortman sought to address those concerns directly: "Regardless of the challenges elsewhere in the world, the United States' focus on the Indo-Pacific and our ironclad commitment to the Philippines remains unwavering."

Philippine Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Romeo Brawner said the exercises would build systems that "think, move, and respond as one," reflecting Manila's broader push to deepen security partnerships with Western nations. Japan's Colonel Takeshi Higuchi added that Tokyo's participation was intended to help create a security environment that "tolerates no attempt to unilaterally change the status quo by force." Outside the ceremony venue, a group of around 50 protesters gathered, holding signs calling for the withdrawal of US forces and criticising the US president.

The expansion of Balikatan to include seven nations underscores a broader strategic realignment in the Indo-Pacific, with Manila signing visiting forces or equivalent agreements with France, Canada, and New Zealand in recent years to broaden the coalition of countries that can participate in joint exercises on Philippine soil. For a country that sits at the intersection of the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, and major Pacific sea lanes, the scale and composition of this year's drills signal that the Philippines is increasingly positioning itself as a hub for multilateral security cooperation in one of the world's most contested regions.