US and Philippines holding greatest fight drills in a long time after China-Taiwan stand-off

The US and the Philippines are holding their largest fight drills in a long time after China carried out mock air and sea assaults off the coast of Taiwan.

The pre-planned annual “Balikatan” workouts will contain greater than 17,600 army personnel and embody live-fire drills resembling a boat-sinking rocket assault in waters throughout the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.

It would be the newest show of American firepower in Asia and is more likely to additional inflame tensions with China, which doesn’t recognise Taiwan’s independence.

Chinese warplanes and navy ships remained within the waters round Taiwan on Tuesday following the top of China’s three days of conflict video games, the island’s defence ministry stated on Tuesday.

“We are not provoking anybody by simply exercising,” Colonel Michael Logico, a Philippine spokesman for Balikatan, stated forward of the beginning of the manoeuvres.

“This is actually a form of deterrence”, he added. “Deterrence is when we are discouraging other parties from invading us.”

America’s warships, fighter jets in addition to its Patriot missiles, HIMARS rocket launchers and anti-tank Javelins, are to be showcased throughout the drills, officers say.

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Field situations resembling a boat-sinking in Philippine territorial waters are designed to “test the allies’ capabilities in combined arms live-fire, information and intelligence sharing, communications between manoeuvre units, logistics operations, amphibious operations,” the US Embassy in Manila stated.

The workouts happen amid a push by Joe Biden‘s administration to strengthen an arc of alliances within the Indo-Pacific to raised counter China, together with in a potential confrontation over Taiwan.

Washington has repeatedly warned China over what it sees as its more and more aggressive actions within the disputed sea channel and towards Taiwan.

Relations between the 2 superpowers had been additional strained not too long ago after it was revealed that the Chinese spy balloon that flew over the US was in a position to collect intelligence from a number of delicate American army websites.