THE PHILIPPINES should beef up its naval warfare capabilities by streamlining investments in the country’s shipbuilding industry to help boost deterrence against Chinese aggression in the South China Sea, defense analysts said.
Manila should also leverage its geographic features and abundant mineral resources to fast-track the development of a robust domestic warship and fighter plane manufacturing industry after the signing of a law that seeks to boost the country’s defense posture.
The Self-Reliant Defense Posture Revitalization Act, which President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. signed into law last week, mandates the government to support local defense manufacturers.
Experts said the law would help secure Philippine sovereignty and territorial integrity, especially amid lingering Chinese presence within Manila’s exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea.
“The key focus of the Self-Reliant Defense Posture Act should first be to develop the naval capabilities in its equipment, arms, naval vessels and communications, including radar systems, specifically aimed against China’s defense weaponry and surveillance,” Rocio Salle Gatdula, a defense economist currently taking up security studies at Georgetown University, said in a Facebook Messenger chat.
“Tensions in the South China Sea [should force] the Philippines to prioritize maritime security,” she added, urging the government to enhance the Philippine Navy’s capabilities with advanced materiel such as anti-ship missile systems and submarines.
Tensions between Manila and Beijing have worsened in the past year as China continues to block ships ferrying provisions for Filipino troops stationed at a beached vessel at Second Thomas Shoal.
The international community has criticized China’s use of water cannons against smaller Philippine vessels.
The two countries reached a “provisional agreement” on Philippine resupply missions to BRP Sierra Madre, a World War II-era ship that Manila deliberately grounded at Second Thomas Shoal in 1999 to bolster its claims, after repeated sea encounters.
China’s use of so-called “gray-zone” activities, or coercive tactics just shy of direct armed confrontation, including the use of water cannons and ramming tactics against Manila’s vessels pushed the Philippines to enact a self-defense posture law, Chester B. Cabalza, founding president of Manila-based think-tank International Development and Security Cooperation, said in a Facebook chat.
The Philippine Defense department should also look at investing in “small and litoral” ships that can counter China’s conventional warships through agility, to improve Manila’s sea patrol capabilities, according to Ms. Gatdula.
Manufacturing coastal defense missile systems could also limit Bejing’s encroachment of Philippine waters, she added. “These are some areas that the self-reliant defense posture could hone in to protect ourselves but also avoid unnecessarily large confrontations with China.”
In 2016, a United Nations-backed tribunal based in the Hague voided China’s claim to more than 80% of the South China Sea for being illegal. Beijing has rejected the ruling.
Defense Secretary Gilberto C. Teodoro, Jr. in October said the Philippine military must be armed with “asymmetric capabilities,” pushing for modern defense technologies.
“Using asymmetric capabilities will allow the Philippines to explore unconventional tactics to counter our bigger and more advanced adversaries,” Ms. Gatdula said.
Mr. Cabalza said the Defense secretary’s advocacy for asymmetric capabilities would help push the implementation of a “comprehensive archipelagic defense.”
The Philippines should look at building dual-use infrastructure such as sea ports along the country’s shorelines to fast-track the country’s shipbuilding capabilities, Don McLain Gill, an international relations lecturer at De La Salle university, said in a Messenger chat.
Dual-use infrastructure refers to facilities that can both be used by civilians and the military.
“We must invest in research and development of our skilled labor towards defense manufacturing as well, and this would involve a lot of capacity building and training from within and through our partnerships as well,” he added.
The government should put in place good governance policies, such as a stronger Freedom of Information (FOI) regime, in the defense law’s implementation to prevent corruption, which could undermine the country’s defense industry, Michael Henry Ll. Yusingco, a senior research fellow at the Ateneo Policy Center, said in a Messenger chat.
“The Department of National Defense should make an effort to institute FOI mechanisms to facilitate the proper engagement of civil society, especially media, with the defense industry. It should foster a culture of openness and accountability,” he added. — Kenneth Christiane L. Basilio