US Army Exports Multinational Combat Training Center To Philippines

The US Army is exporting its Joint Pacific Multinational Combat Training Center to the Philippines as the Southeast Asia country seeks to enhance and modernise its defence strategy.

The Philippines’ “concept of operations is shifting into one of the more territorial defence operations and they’re beginning to train with that,” General Charles Flynn, US Army Pacific commander, told Defense News in an interview at the Association of the US Army’s LANPAC conference in Honolulu.

The US Army is bringing its JPMRC Exportable to Fort Magsaysay located in central Luzon where jungle training and even special operations training take place and can accommodate a larger-scale collective training event. Even so, the Philippines Armed Forces lack a training centre at the scale of the JPMRC.

The centre set-up is nearly complete and the JPMRC rotation will begin this month, according to leaders in charge of the effort.

US joint forces and the Philippines Armed Forces recently completed major exercises together – the first phase of Salaknib as well as Balikatan. Balikatan wrapped up on 9 May and a second phase of Salaknib is beginning with JPMRC X as a focus.

During Balikatan, “We executed long-range air assaults off the northern portion of Luzon with our 3rd Brigade Combat Team, and across the joint force projecting force into the islands in the Luzon Strait,” Major General Marcus Evans, US Army commander of the 25th Infantry Division based in Hawaii, told Defense News at LANPAC.

“What that provided us is an opportunity to work with the joint force, work with the Philippines Army and our experience with their 5th Infantry Division and 7th Infantry Division over these last three months has been exceptional. We will culminate this at the end of May, beginning of June with a Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center rotation forward in the Philippines, which will be the first one west of the International Date Line,” Evans said.