Only PH decides military assets deployment in its territory – AFP

FILE PHOTO: Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Chief of Staff General Romeo Brawner (L) talks to US soldiers as they stand to a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), displayed at the Asian Defense and Security Exhibition (ADAS) in Manila on Sepetember 25, 2024. (Photo by Ted ALJIBE / Agence France-Presse)
MANILA, Philippines — Only the Philippines – and no other country – can decide the deployment of any military asset within its territory, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) asserted Friday.
AFP spokesperson Francel Margareth Padilla said, “[t]here is no single entity who can dictate how we would do our deployments in terms of our defenses,” reacting to the remarks of China Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning, who reiterated Beijing’s opposition to the US Typhon midrange missile capability that has been in the Philippines for several months now.
“It’s an inherent right of every state to heighten and strengthen their defenses accordingly,” Padilla also said in an interview Friday at Camp Aguinaldo. “How we would go about it is for us to freely do.”
Padilla likewise confirmed previous reports that the Typhon missile had been transferred to an undisclosed location.
The AFP official noted that such actions could be done whenever there are preparations for drills.
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However, she did not say if this development is related to the upcoming annual war games between Manila and Washington held every first quarter of the year.
“Whenever we conduct any of our exercises, we do not give announcements prior,” she said.
“When we heighten and strengthen our defenses, we have to look into the possibility of being able to deploy salient assets to salient locations as well,” she also said.
The Typhon missile arrived in the country from the United States on April 11, 2024, and was first used during the Balikatan exercises.
It has stayed in the country since, and was last spotted in Ilocos Norte, a coastal province facing Taiwan, which is deemed by China as a renegade province subject to reunification.
In 2024, AFP chief Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr. said he wants the Typhon missile to stay in the country “forever” and that he hopes the Philippines could acquire its own.
To date, the Philippines has its own medium-range supersonic cruise missile dubbed “BrahMos,” which has a range of 290 to 400 kilometers and could travel at Mach 2.8, or about three times faster than the speed of sound.
On Thursday night, Mao urged Manila to “heed the call from regional countries and their peoples, correct the wrongdoing as soon as possible, quickly pull out the Typhon missile system as publicly pledged, and stop going further down the wrong path.”
The deployment of Typhon missile in the country comes amid mounting tensions in the West Philippine Sea due to Manila and Beijing’s overlapping claims.
However, in July 2026, the Philippines earned a historic arbitral award that effectively rejected China’s sweeping claims in the West Philippine Sea.
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