The Armed Forces of the Philippines is eyeing more military exercises with its counterparts in the United States during the upcoming 39th iteration of the Manila-Washington Balikatan in April this year.

In a press conference on Tuesday, AFP spokesperson Col. Francel Margareth Padilla said more training will revolve around littoral airspace and land space military exercises.

“We are going to have more exercises in key positions all over the country aside from quantity we will heavily lean on towards quality training, we will build upon the success of the last Balikatan…We are doing things a little differently. We are adding some more challenges, some more complexity towards the exercise,” Padilla told reporters.

Padilla added that non-physical domain training such as cyberspace and information warfare drills will also be included in this year's Balikatan exercise.

Balikatan exercise is an annual training activity between the AFP and US Armed Forces' Indo-Pacific Command geared toward enhancing bilateral interoperability, strengthening the capacity and competencies of both forces in a spectrum of military operations such as counter-terrorism; humanitarian assistance; and disaster response.