{"id":20793,"date":"2026-05-12T03:17:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T03:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/20793\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T03:17:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T03:17:07","slug":"five-ways-of-looking-at-the-japanese-sinking-of-a-decommissioned-philippine-ship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/20793\/","title":{"rendered":"Five ways of looking at the Japanese sinking of a decommissioned Philippine ship"},"content":{"rendered":"

PAOAY, Philippines\u2014Right on cue, the missiles blazed from their launcher, kicking up sand behind them. A few minutes later, cheers from the VIP pavilion confirmed that the Japanese Type 88s<\/a> had hit their target, sinking a decommissioned Philippine ship about 46 miles away.<\/p>\n

Last week\u2019s mock attack marked the first time Japan has fired the missile outside its own borders. Part of the annual Balikatan exercise, it came just two days after Japanese infantry troops participated in a live-fire counter-landing wargame<\/a> on a nearby beach, practicing to defend a shore against invasion from the sea. And it was just one day after the U.S. Army fired a Tomahawk<\/a> long-range missile from the service\u2019s Typhon launcher in a different part of the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cBalikatan 2026 marked a strategic evolution from a bilateral exercise to a full-scale, multinational mission rehearsal for the defense of the Philippines,\u201d U.S. Indo-Pacific Command boss Adm. Samuel Paparo said Friday at the closing ceremony. \u201cThat growth reflects the security environment. It reflects the sovereign choices of free nations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The firing was an important step for the Japanese self-defense forces and part of the \u201ccontinuing march of Japan into a more high-profile status within the region,\u201d said Brad Glosserman, senior advisor for Pacific Forum<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even before 2014, when Japan\u2019s cabinet lifted<\/a> the self-imposed prohibition on collective self-defense, the country has been making a \u201cslow,\u201d even \u201csubterranean\u201d creep toward action by Japan\u2019s military, Glosserman said. Shinzo Abe<\/a> made it a key part of his agenda as prime minister, and the shift has accelerated in recent years. Now Japan is acquiring the capabilities and reorganizing the national security infrastructure to make it happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s one thing to say you\u2019re going to do it, and then it\u2019s another thing to be able to do it,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd they\u2019re doing\u2014they\u2019re both showing the intent and demonstrating the capacity to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Standing in the sweltering sun in front of the Japanese missile launcher after the exercise, Philippine defense secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. told reporters that now that his country\u2019s military has seen how the Type 88 works, \u201cit is something that we can interoperate with in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very, very proud and happy that we were able to pull this off for the first time, and it will only get larger in scope, with more partners,\u201d Teodoro told a group of international journalists. \u201cYou can see this is a very complicated area to operate in. But can you imagine if there’s a, God forbid, a natural calamity, we will know how to help each other in this area. It also upgrades the skills and the awareness of our troops, in the capabilities that our allies have, and in coordination mechanisms with the different participants. So it’s a complex exercise. The culmination was simple, initial firing, but to get there was very difficult, and we surmounted the obstacle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi watched the exercise but did not speak to reporters afterward.<\/p>\n

Lt. Col. Ishikawa Daisuke, a public affairs officer with the Japanese joint staff, said in a written release<\/a> that firing the surface-to-ship missile in the exercise \u201callowed us to validate our tactical integration with the U.S. and Philippine forces\u2026sequencing our capabilities provides that our defense systems can operate seamlessly together, which is essential for defense of the maritime domain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not everyone saw the demonstration as a step forward. Sarang Shidore, who leads director of the Global South Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said firing missiles like the Type 88 and the Tomahawk in the Philippines, and deploying weapons like the Marine Corps\u2019 NMESIS\u2014a shore-to-ship anti-missile system that was displayed near the Type 88 during the maritime strike here in Northern Luzon\u2014was overly provocative.<\/p>\n

While the U.S. has a role to play in helping the Philippines deter China from continuing its gray-zone tactics<\/a> in the South China Sea, Shidore told Defense One, \u201cmy problem is with these big guns, these big missile systems, which are basically, to me they\u2019re Taiwan-specific weapon systems. They are for a major interstate war between the U.S. and China, and that\u2019s likely to only happen over a Taiwan scenario.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy argument is that these missile platforms don\u2019t align, actually, with South China Sea goals, which are separate from the Taiwan question. And do it\u2019s inadvisable for the United States to think of the Philippines as simply an extension of Japan, if you will, to fight the Taiwan contingency.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Shidore said, \u201cthe greatest significance of this Balikatan has been such, such a deep involvement of Japan in the actual combat dimensions of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

China, predictably, criticized<\/a> Japan\u2019s involvement in the largest-ever Balikatan, saying the countries participating were \u201cplaying with fire.\u201d Later, the country sent armed<\/a> anti-ship bombers over the Scarborough Shoal.<\/p>\n

But at the maritime strike, Teodoro rejected any characterization of Balikatan as \u201cmilitarization\u201d instead of \u201cnational defense.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s always a claim of militarization, but it\u2019s under the control of civilian authorities, and these things should have been exercised and done a long time ago, this being an archipelago. \u2026The claims of militarization are totally misplaced at this day and age, when we are open, transparent with the exercises, save for operational security,\u201d he said. \u201cFor us, for the Philippines, it\u2019s interoperability for Philippine resilience\u2026. Insofar as we have convergence with our like-minded partners, it\u2019s our share, and helping us to punch with our own weight in defending ourselves and to contribute to regional peace and stability.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr., chief of staff of the Philippines military, said in a written release that the exercise \u201cwas never simply about conducting activities.\u201d Instead, he said, \u201cit was about strengthening the ability to respond together in real, complex conditions. And that matters because in today\u2019s security environment, readiness cannot be improvised.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PAOAY, Philippines\u2014Right on cue, the missiles blazed from their launcher, kicking up sand behind them. A few minutes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20794,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8],"class_list":{"0":"post-20793","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-japan","8":"tag-japan"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}