This is John Batchel, conversation with Captain James Vinell, United States Navy Retired Intelligence,

about the Philippines becoming a porcupine, adding road-mobile anti-ship missiles.

Here Jim describes the scale of it and the thinking.

It involves the U.S. eventually, but the Philippines are paying a large sum in order to defend their parts of the islands, the archipelago, that are vulnerable to Chinese aggression, especially off the South China Sea.

Here's Jim Fennell. Much more of this later.

It was signed, as I said, back in 2022 for about $375 million.

And it's part of a larger program that the Philippines has put together.

And they would like to have up to 50 batteries of these kind of anti-ship cruise missiles

and air defense systems and multiple launch rocket systems.

And it's part of a $7.2 billion dollar Philippine defense program that's basically one-fifth

of their entire defense budget.

And it's called their, they've named this the Rehorizon 3 military modernization program.

And it's part of their comprehensive archipelagic defense concept, which is to essentially focus the Philippine defense

strategy on the South China Sea or the West Philippine Sea, and to be able to bring serious

weapons systems to bear against the People's Republic of China

and the bullying that they've been doing down there.

So this is an extension, essentially, of what the United States has been working with Japan

and the U.S. Marine Corps to bring missile systems into the southern Ryuku Islands.

We're doing the same thing.

U.S. Marine Corps is working with the Philippine Marine Corps.

They've been exercising with these new missile systems like Hi-Mars and Nemesis.