The United States and the Philippines have concluded their first counterterrorism drill under the Duterte administration, boosting their capabilities to jointly plan, coordinate and conduct counter- terrorism operations.
However, while the drill was conducted against the backdrop of the government’s raging anti-terrorism operation in Marawi City, the exercise zeroed in on airplane highjacking and hostage rescue as its realistic scenarios, with the scene being Clark Field in Pampanga.
Defense Secretary Delfin N. Lorenza said the “Tempest Wind” exercise, which was joined by more than 500 participants from both countries, including policemen, soldiers and even civilians from the Philippine side, improved the capabilities of the two countries to jointly respond to acts of terrorism.
The “whole of nation” drill, he said, has also afforded both countries to assess their needs for them to be able to fully respond to terrorism, while spelling out the necessity to cooperate and work together in confronting the problem.
“With the help of the US and those of other allies, we can stop this problem,” Lorenzana said, referring to terrorism, which is a threat to the country, and a problem for other Southeast Asian nations.
Questions were, however, raised whether the exercise was responsive and even reflective of the current situation of terrorism in the Philippines as it picked on an “imaginary” scenario instead of the ongoing operations against the Maute-IS Group in Marawi.
The drill tackled a realistic scenario wherein a passenger plane coming from Sydney, Australia was highjacked by IS terrorists and forced to land in the Philippines, instead of Hawaii, which is its destination.
The Tempest Wind, held from September 18 to 26, used a real American airliner with 162 American and Filipino passenger-participants for the counterterrorism exercise.
While the drill did not make use of the ongoing anti-terrorism operation in Marawi as the more realistic scenario, Defense Spokesman Arsenio Andolong said the Marawi siege served as a background for the exercise.