The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) is moving to establish a new Strategic Defense Command to oversee joint training operations with allied nations, as part of efforts to respond to evolving security challenges.
AFP spokesperson Col. Francel Margareth Padilla said the new unit aims to improve the military's ability to “respond more quickly” to a wide range of scenarios.
“So, we are actually doing three things. The CCC — we are collaborating, we are calibrating, and we are coiling like a spring. With the creation of this, we are getting ready. So that in any eventuality, we are not going to get ready, but we are already ready,” Padilla told reporters during an ambush interview Thursday at Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City.
She noted that while no exact timeline has been set, the AFP expects the new command to be “operational within the year.”
Padilla said the AFP is still finalizing the structure of the command, including leadership and unit composition. “The creation of the unit, we are reviewing everything–what will be the composition of this unit, who will lead, and if we can fuse the efforts together to come up with this unit,” she explained.
The unit is expected to go through a provisional phase before becoming officially established. It will also potentially adopt a “fusion triad” model that integrates intelligence, civil-military operations, and military operations.
“In the fusion of these three, there will be speedy decision-making; this is what we are really looking at here,” Padilla said.
She emphasized that the AFP is adapting to modern threats through the creation of specialized units. “We have been evolving with the contemporary modern challenges that we are facing. We have been creating units to address the modern challenges that we are facing right now,” she said.
AFP Chief Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr. compared the proposed Strategic Defense Command to Japan’s recently launched Joint Operations Command (JOC), highlighting Japan as one of the country’s closest security partners.
“We are setting up this year the Strategic Defense Command or the Strategic Command who will be the ones in charge of exercising with our allies and our partners so that we sharpen the knife, we improve the systems, and we are able to act swiftly,” Brawner said during an event at Basa Air Base in Floridablanca, Pampanga last Sunday.
Japan’s JOC, launched in March, oversees all joint operations and integrates branches of the Japan Self-Defense Force to ensure a seamless response in emergencies.
Padilla emphasized that the creation of any military unit must undergo a comprehensive review. “And with that, we look at best practices and do not replicate. Pagsasama-samahin natin all the different best practices, we look at how it will fit in the Philippine setting as there is no one-size-fits-all na solution for any country–dynamics are different,” she said.
“The overarching premise is we do not reinvent the wheel. So whatever works for other countries, whatever country that may be, we can fuse all of this together to our advantage,” she added.
Padilla said the command would unify various operational and training efforts under a single framework.
“Right now, these exercises are under our training and doctrine command, our AFP Education and Training and Doctoring. So we will do this unit to specifically address all of these training that we are conducting,” she explained.
Padilla cited the annual Exercise Balikatan with the United States, currently handled by the AFP’s Education, Training, and Doctrine Command, as an example of the kind of joint operations that could be streamlined under the new command.
“All of this, it marries all of our efforts together. Our modernization, we have a lot of new equipment that came in. So with that, the training is bundled. So with the exercises, how will we use this? How do we use this modern equipment that we have? And how do we interoperate and integrate this with the different nations also joining us?” she said.
Earlier this month, Gen. Brawner urged Northern Luzon Command troops to prepare for a possible Taiwan contingency, citing the military’s role in the potential evacuation of over 250,000 overseas Filipino workers.
Prior to that, the AFP also activated the Intelligence Command and Cyber Command to bolster national defense against modern security threats.