(27 Apr 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Cagayan province, Philippines – 26 April 2025
1. Nemesis anti-ship missile launcher being loaded onto a U.S. C-130 aircraft
2. U.S. Marines walking towards aircraft
3. Various of Nemesis lead vehicle being guided into the aircraft
4. Aircraft taking off
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Batan Island, Philippines – 26 April 2025
5. Nemesis missile launcher being unloaded
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Pampanga city, Philippines – 26 April 2025
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Lt. Gen. Michael Cederholm, U.S. Marine:
"That’s something in our treaty obligations, that’s the longest treaty obligation in the Pacific, that’s something we always take seriously. For the United State Marine Corps, we’ve never left the Pacific, even when we were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, we never left the Pacific."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Batan Island, Philippines – 26 April 2025
7. Nemesis launcher, personnel and military vehicles
STORYLINE:
The U.S. military has deployed an anti-ship missile launcher for the first time on Batan Island in the Philippines, as Marines unloaded the high-precision weapon on the northern tip of the archipelago, just a sea border away from Taiwan.
U.S. and Philippine forces separately unleashed a barrage of missile and artillery fire that shot down several drones acting as hostile aircraft in live-fire drills on Sunday in Zambales province facing the disputed South China Sea.
The mock battle scenarios over the weekend in the annual Balikatan exercises between the U.S. and its oldest treaty ally in Asia, the Philippines, not only simulated real-life war.
They were also staged near major geopolitical hotspots, which have become delicate frontlines in the regional rivalry between China and the U.S. under former President Joe Biden and now Donald Trump.
About 9,000 American and 5,000 Filipino military personnel took part in the combat maneuvers.
At least 260 Australian personnel also joined, with smaller observer delegations from Japan and other countries.
China has fiercely opposed the combat drills as provocative.
Its aircraft carrier group sailed by a few days earlier near Batanes, where the U.S. military had deployed the Navy Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System on Saturday on Batan near the Bashi Channel just south of Taiwan, a critical trade and military route that the U.S. and Chinese militaries have tried to gain strategic control of.
The U.S. and the Philippines have denied the annual combat maneuvers — which both said would focus on a “full-scale battle scenario” this year — were aimed at China or any adversary.
The lines between what’s mock and real, however, have been at times murky.
During the combat exercises from April 21 to May 9, American and Filipino forces will also practice jointly defending Philippine islands by repelling hostile forces attempting to assault from the sea in the western Philippine province of Palawan, which faces the South China Sea, and in northern Cagayan province near Batanes.
Early this month, the Chinese military staged largescale drills in the waters around Taiwan and renewed a warning to the self-ruled democracy not to seek independence. Chinese navy, air, ground and rocket forces staged the drills.
The Philippines used to host two of the largest U.S. Navy and Air Force bases outside the American mainland.
The bases were shut down in the early 1990s after the Philippine Senate rejected an extension, but American forces returned for large-scale combat exercises with Filipino troops under a 1999 agreement.
AP video shot by Jim Gomez
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