What’s US Task Force Philippines and what will it do in PH waters?

MANILA, Philippines – A day before the Philippines officially took over the chairship of the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Defence Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM) and the ADMM Plus, the United States and the Philippines announced the creation of “Task Force Philippines.”

Speaking to reporters ahead of a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the ADMM Plus in Kuala Lumpur on October 31, Friday, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the task force would help the two countries “decisively respond to crisis or aggression and reestablish deterrence in the South China [Sea].”

Hegseth had prefaced the task force’s announcement by saying that the US “share concerns over China’s coercion in the South China Sea, particularly in Scarborough Shoal,” referring to a high-tide elevation that’s become, once again, a flashpoint for tensions between Manila and Beijing.

But what exactly is this new task force and what will it be doing?

From Ayungin to the Philippines

The creation of Task Force Philippines is preceded by another task force whose existence was made public just a month shy of a year ago.

Task Force Ayungin, created in the aftermath of the tensest confrontation between the Philippine military and the China Coast Guard (CCG) back in June 2024, was created so American soldiers and Filipino soldiers from the Western Command could train and exercise together in relation to rotation and reprovisioning (RORE) missions to Ayungin Shoal, where the rusty BRP Sierra Madre serves as an outpost for a small group of Filipino soldiers.

Based on interviews with Filipino defense officials, Task Force Philippines will have a much wider scope.

“There was Task Force Ayungin, right? We’re expanding that now… to cover the entire archipelago,” Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) chief General Romeo Brawner Jr. told reporters on Sunday, November 2, on the sidelines of a bilateral meeting with Canada.

Its coverage, said Brawner, spans all of the Philippines’ maritime areas. That’s a wide area that includes the West Philippine Sea to the west, the Philippine Sea to the east, the Celebes and Sulu Seas down south, and even the South China Sea and Philippine Strait up north.

The Task Force is how the United States can align, operationally, with the Philippines’ Comprehensive Archipelagic Defense Concept (CADC) or its strategy to secure the country’s vast maritime areas.

“In order for the Indo-Pacific Command to have control, command and control over its forces in the Philippines, it created that. Para hindi kalat-kalat (So it’s consolidated),” said Brawner. The Indo-Pacific Command or the INDOPACOMM is the United States military’s largest command, spanning the coast of California all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr., asked about the Task Force in a press conference, said it would “converge all our bilateral activities.”

Like Task Force Ayungin, a one-star general or a flag officer will head Task Force Philippines. “Instead of us talking to [INDOPACOMM chief] Admiral [Samuel] Paparo who is several miles away, we’re going to talk to him,” said Brawner, referring to the official who’ll be heading the Task Force.

The US Pacific Fleet, through a spokesperson, earlier said around 60 personnel would make up Task Force Philippines and would “[enhance] Philippine-led Comprehensive Archipelagic Defense Concept capabilities through planning, interoperability, and synchronization of operations, activities, and investments in the Philippines.”

A key difference between Task Force Ayungin and Task Force Philippines would be its inception — Task Force Ayungin was born in response to a tense incident while Task Force Philippines was a point of discussion between the militaries of the Philippines and the United States that was later “elevated to the level of the ministers,” according to Brawner.

The new Task Force is a “function of the Mutual Defense Treaty,” said Teodoro.

Articles II and IV of the treaty state that the two countries:

• Will “separately and jointly by self-help and mutual aid will maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack,”
• And recognize that “an armed attack in the Pacific area on either of the Parties would be dangerous to its own peace and safety and declares that it would act to meet the common dangers in accordance with its constitutional processes.”

Another agreement between the US and the Philippines, the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), sets the legal framework through which American troops are deployed to the Philippines, typically for bilateral and multilateral exercises.

Deeper engagements between the Philippines and the United States — and of the Philippines with other “like-minded” countries — come as Manila grows more assertive in defending its maritime entitlements and claims in the West Philippine Sea, an area that includes the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone and features that it claims.

PH, US defense ties

The new task force is, perhaps, proof that bilateral ties — especially when it comes to defense — are only growing closer from the previous Biden administration to the current Trump administration.

The public indications were already there, of course.

Hegseth is the first Cabinet-level official under the Trump administration to visit the Philippines back in March 2025 — his first stop in the Indo-Pacific, an area the former former Fox and Friends Weekend co-host has repeatedly said would be a “priority theater” for the US Department of Defense (now called the Department of War).

Military assistance pledges were the first to get exemptions on US President Donald Trump’s dramatic pause of all international aid. In the recent Balikatan exercises, the flagship bilateral drills between the US and the Philippines, the US deployed its Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS). Drills included live-firing of the system — although US officials would later walk back on that confirmation and leave its usage in Philippine waters expectedly vague.

Of course, long before NMESIS’ deployment was the arrival of the Typhon missile launcher in 2024.

Teodoro, who has been at the helm of the Philippine Department of National Defense since July 2023, said on October 31 that it was important for both Manila and Washington not only to work together better but to “add more allies.”

Other countries have been joining the Philippines and United States in war games across the archipelago and joint sails in the West Philippine Sea – including Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and Canada, countries with whom the Philippines has visiting forces agreements with.

France, which is still negotiating a visiting forces agreement with the Philippines, has also joined a joint sail in the West Philippine Sea. India, with whom the Philippines recently upgraded ties to a Strategic Partnership, has also sailed with Manila in the West Philippine Sea. – Rappler.com