Col. Sevilla: What makes me excited about this Balikatan is what I mentioned this morning at our simple opening ceremony for the SOFOR events. I mentioned that it was in mid-2021 when . planners came to my office and I was telling them: “Why not come up with different scenarios or training concepts for Balikatan? We should not just focus on small unit tactics. Perhaps we can incorporate unconventional warfare (UW) in the exercise, but on a limited scale. Instead of following the seven phases of UW, we can skip some of its phases since we have a limited time in the exercise.” It was good that they adopted the idea. It was last year’s Balikatan when UW was incorporated into the training, and it was so timely because a few weeks before the start of Balikatan, the Ukraine crisis erupted. The scenario that I was discussing with the . planners during their visit to my office was almost the same with what is happening now in Ukraine. Now I am excited because of how we are going to practice that and rehearse that and come up with concepts that would help not only our Soldiers but also the Filipino community to become resilient and resistant if there is an invasion. So Balikatan would be a test case and perhaps by next year [2024], we would want it to expand more and not just focus on unilateral UW, but it should be a joint, combined type of UW.
The development will surely be focusing on new trends for special operations. We are now talking even with our . counterparts during the Balikatan exercise about exploring the other special operations fields apart from counterterrorism.
我们的价值在于美国在特种作战方面具有非常丰富的经验。我们在应对本国的反叛乱和冲突的特别行动方面拥有自己的经验。但美国已经去了许多地方，并且有各种各样的特种作战部队经验。美国及其他国家的理论已经很完善。如果我们能从中吸取教训，那肯定对菲律宾特战部队有好处。仅此一项便为双边接触做出了巨大的贡献：让美国与我们交谈。
“We only have to reference the ongoing Ukraine crisis and the persistent incursions into our territorial waters,” he said.
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