The annual Balikatan military training exercise in the Philippines is set to be the most large-scale exercise conducted to date, with both the American and Philippine militaries committing thousands of soldiers.
Balikatan, meaning shoulder-to-shoulder, brings the US and Filipino militaries together to train jointly and build enduring relationships every year going back to the 1990s. In recent years, the Australian military has also participated.
Filipino Armed Forces spokesman Col. Fransel Margareth Padilla said, "It’s going to happen in April and it’s going to be…bigger than last time and [involve] more key locations," at a recent press conference. This year the Philippines will commit over 17,000 soldiers to the exercise. In previous years, the US has committed around 5,000 troops.
This year the exercise is being planned to take place in the Northern reaches of the Philippines on the Batanes archipelago between Luzon and Taiwan. According to a Filipino military spokesman the island they are looking at is uninhabited making it an ideal location, but the exercise is still in the planning stages.
Balikatan 2024 will be perhaps more controversial than previous years due to it taking place in contested waters that the Chinese government has often laid claim to. In 2016, The Hague made a significant ruling in favor of the Philippines, and against China's illegal occupation of Filipino territorial waters and islands.
Last year, the Chinese embassy in Manila issued a statement about Balikatan which, in part stated that the exercise, "should not target any third party and should be conducive to regional peace and stability."