US to showcase missile during Balikatan exercise
Purchase of Himars rocket system a possibility, Major General Santiago says
Published: 16:48 April 5, 2016
http://gulfnews.com/news/asia/philippines/us-to-showcase-missile-during-balikatan-exercise-1.1704521Gulf News
Gilbert P. Felongco, Correspondent
Manila: The US military will conduct live fire drills of its tactical ballistic missiles system during the joint exercises now under way. A Philippine official, meanwhile, said the country is considering acquiring such units for its own armed forces.
Major General Rodolfo Santiago, assistant exercise director of the Balikatan (Shoulder to Shoulder) military drills, said the war games using the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (Himars) would benefit the Philippine armed forces.
Tactical ballistic missiles have a range of several hundreds of kilometres and are different from long-range rockets that could reach surface targets more than a 1,000 miles away.
The US military will be holding a demonstration of the capabilities of the Himars at the Crow Valley Range in Tarlac, Northern Luzon.
“If the Philippines has a requirement for such rocket systems, then Himars could be an alternative, which is not that expensive in the long run,” he said.
Priced at $3.48 million (Dh12.78 million) per launch unit — which comprises a truck launch platform and six missiles each with a range of up to 300km — the Himars could help in deterring possible aggression by China against islands it holds in the South China Sea.
US Marine Lt Gen John Toolan, who is in charge of US forces in the Balikatan exercise, said Himars had never been used in previous military exercises between the two allies.
“This will be the first time that we have brought out this weapon system in the Pacific. The Philippines offers great opportunities to go ahead and experiment, testing, shooting,” Toolan said.
The missiles that will be used are “inert” meaning they will not have explosive warheads.
The Philippines had been conducting join exercises with US troops since 2000 when the Balikatan drills were reinstated after several years’ lull. The earlier drills had been primarily geared to counter the threat of terrorism. But in recent years the force-readiness activities had taken on disaster management activities as well as external threat response scenarios.
Gen. Iriberi said aside from US and Philippines military, this year’s Balikatan exercise involves the participation of Australian Defence Forces.
“We welcome the participation for the first time of the members of the Japan Self Defence Forces as observers in this exercise. And we are much pleased to see the delegations in our ‘Balikatan’ 2016 international observers programme from eight other countries — Brunei, Canada, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Korea, Thailand, Timor Leste and Vietnam,” Iriberi said.
