US special forces ready to step up combat drills in Philippines and help deter aggression in Asia

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — American special operations forces are ready to step up warfighting-readiness exercises with counterparts in the Philippines and other countries in Asia to further strengthen a security alliance and help deter a major conflict in the region, a U.S. military official said Thursday.

Adm. Frank Bradley, commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, is in the Philippines after a trip to South Korea. He will then head to Japan for talks with military officials.

He is the latest American military top brass to visit key Asian allies in recent weeks to reassure them of Washington’s commitment to the region given the U.S. preoccupation with the war in Iran.

Bradley’s command, which has about 80,000 personnel and is based at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, undertakes the U.S. military’s most sensitive and dangerous covert operations. The majority of his forces are deployed in more than 80 countries worldwide, Bradley said.

He discussed with Filipino counterparts the Philippine military’s continuing effort to modernize, intensify combat exercises with the U.S. and other allies and broaden an arc of security alliances to deter China’s increasingly hostile actions in the South China Sea.

China and smaller rival claimant states, including the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan, have been locked in tense territorial standoffs for decades in the disputed waters but confrontations have particularly flared between Chinese and Philippine forces.

Washington has repeatedly warned of its obligation to defend the Philippines, its oldest treaty ally in Asia, if Filipino forces come under an armed attack.

A cohesive alliance of countries, which each invest in their defense and regularly stage joint combat-readiness drill to brace for contingencies, was the best deterrent against a major conflict, Bradley said.

“The best way to deter conflict is by being able to demonstrate convincingly to any adversary who may want to start a conflict that they won’t be able to win it,” Bradley told The Associated Press in Manila late Thursday.

“Where we have strong alliance structures … conflict has not come to it,” he said. “Together, we are stronger, and together, we can prevent those conflicts from coming to us.”

Large-scale combat exercises between U.S. and Filipino forces have involved more allies and friendly nations such as Japan, Australia, Canada and France in recent years and have focused on the Philippines’ territorial defense in the South China Sea.

U.S. Special Forces commandos have participated in those annual combat drills, as well as smaller warfighting exercises with Filipino counterparts in western Philippine provinces facing the South China Sea and in the northernmost island province of Batanes, which lies near Taiwan.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth first disclosed a plan to stage joint U.S.-Philippine special forces operations training in Batanes when he visited Manila last year and said the Trump administration would work with allies to ramp up deterrence against threats across the world, including China’s aggression in the South China Sea.

Batanes province is a cluster of islands in the northernmost tip of Philippine archipelago across a sea border from Taiwan, the self-ruled island that China regards as a province and has threatened to annex, by force if necessary.

Bradley did not provide details of the joint special operations forces training and drills, including how many U.S. commandos were involved and what types of maneuvers were being carried out, but he said the exercises were continuing and could possibly expand.

“In the future, how it might scale will be based upon the sovereign needs of the Philippines and where the Philippine government may want us to come and partner, but we will always be committed to be a strong partner,” Bradley said.

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Joeal Calupitan and Aaron Favila in Manila, Philippines, contributed to this report.