Hawaii Marines Field New Weapons in the Philippines
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser | By Kevin Knodell
Published May 02, 2025 at 9:23am ET
SUBIC BAY, Philippines — A unit of Hawaii Marines is in the Philippines fielding new weapons for the first time amid simmering tensions with China.
The Kaneohe-based 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment, which is in the country for the annual Exercise Balikatan, sent its new Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System—better known as the NMESIS—on Saturday to the northern Batanes Islands in the Luzon Strait, just south of Taiwan.
Formerly the 3rd Marine Regiment, the unit officially re-designated as the 3rd MLR in 2022 and is the Marine Corps’s first littoral regiment, part of the service’s Force Design 2030. It’s an effort to bring the Marines back to their roots as a naval fighting force focused on island and coastal fighting. The 3rd MLR is serving as the model for the Corps’ facelift, and NMESIS, an anti-ship missile system, plays a central role in that vision.
Col. John Lehane, the 3rd MLR’s commander, said, “One of the things we looked at is, if you can control choke points, then you control the commerce that goes through them. And so any place where you find key maritime terrain like that, that’s a suitable place to put a weapon system like that. So it’s great rehearsal for us and great to help us integrate with what the Filipinos want to do for their archipelagic coastal defense concept.”
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/05/02/hawaii-marines-field-new-weapons-philippines.html
