Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III today concluded a multiday visit to the Indo-Pacific region with a final trip to Subic Bay in the Philippines.
During the visit, Austin toured a Philippine Navy facility and several defense industrial sites as a way to highlight opportunities there for defense industrial cooperation by the United States, the Philippines, and other regional allies and partners.
"This is a really transformative time for our relationship, our alliance here," Austin told reporters. "You've seen us announce a number of key initiatives. Yesterday you heard us talk about the $500 million in [foreign military financing] opportunity here that we're going to provide to the Philippines. We're excited about that, and that's going to help them modernize their military a bit further. [And] today we saw some of our industrial base companies out here working together to create additional capability, and that's also very, very exciting."
During a U.S.-Philippines 2+2 ministerial dialogue on Tuesday, Austin and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met with their counterparts in Manila to discuss opportunities to strengthen regional peace, stability and prosperity.
As part of those discussions, the U.S. committed to $500 million in foreign military financing to help with modernization of the U.S.-Philippines alliance and, among other things, enhance the capabilities of the Philippine military and coast guard.
Also, part of Austin's visit to Indo-Pacom was a similar 2+2 dialogue in Tokyo, with Japanese counterparts, where the U.S. announced it would transition U.S. Forces Japan, or USFJ, to a joint force headquarters. The new joint force headquarters will be commanded by a three-star officer and will serve as a counterpart to Japan's own Japan Self-Defense Forces Joint Operations Command.
"We're at the very beginning of this evolution and we'll work with our Japanese counterparts to see how to evolve things as we go forward," Austin said. "The three-star command that we're standing up is focused on the command and control of U.S. forces. And the three-star command in the JJOC [JSDF Joint Operations Command] will be focused on Japanese forces. The fact that we're working together will give us a lot greater agility and get a lot more capability, quite frankly."
Austin said the conversion of USFJ to a joint force headquarters will provide greater control over planning combined missions with Japanese forces. With the conversion, it is expected the headquarters will retain its name, USFJ, and will also retain its three-star leadership.