The Marines are set to deploy a new rotational force to the Philippines at a major upcoming exercise.
The 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment will debut the new Littoral Rotational Force-Luzon at the Balikatan 2025 exercise in the Philippines, USNI News has learned.
“When you think MLR, you think of the Philippines,” 1st Lt. Anne Pentaleri, 3rd MLR public affairs officer, told USNI News.
Littoral Rotational Force-Luzon was coined by one of the unit’s officers and will be forward-deployed in the Philippines for Spring’s Balikatan and Summer’s Kamandag exercises, Pentaleri said.
The new formation builds upon three years of consecutive training in the Philippine archipelago in littoral operations and coastal defense, according to the Marines. Compared to Marine Rotational Force-Darwin, another forward-deployed unit in the region, the Philippine force will be headed by the MLR instead of a traditional Marine Air-Ground Task Force.
The new regiments are part of the service’s stand-in force that was developed as part of the Marine Force Design changes built around the idea of creating an island-hopping force to harass warships and other threats in the Pacific.
“Third MLR will continue to enhance its tactics, techniques, and procedures for conducting Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations and stand-in force operations as a lightweight, low-signature, maneuverable formation spread across the Luzon area of operations,” said Pentaleri.
Balikatan 2025 is set to be one of the most intensive iterations of the U.S.-Philippine-led drills to date, hosting a “Full Battle Test simulation.” Between April and May, around 15,000 troops from the U.S., the Philippines and Australia. Japan will also join in the drills for the first time with units in the Philippines and the South China Sea.
It’s unclear if the rotational deployment will include the unit’s recently activated Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System. Assigned to the littoral combat team’s medium-range missile battery, the unmanned vehicle wields two Naval Strike Missiles that can hit maritime targets up to 100 nautical miles away.
USNI News understands that the 3rd MLR seeks to bring the anti-ship system along for a deployment; approval from Manila for the system to come to the Philippines is ongoing. The Philippine Navy is set to fire an anti-ship missile for a sinking exercise at Balikatan.
The Hawaii-based MLR has been at the forefront of the service’s Force Design 2030 efforts, developing new concepts and tactics to deal with adversaries in the Indo-Pacific region. Exercises in the first island chain, particularly the Philippines, have seen the unit utilize new sensors and expeditionary advanced basing operations across littoral areas. Last month’s pre-deployment training saw the regiment employ recently activated air defense and anti-ship missile assets.
According to documents provided to USNI News, the 3rd MLR will participate in coastal defense drills, maritime domain awareness sensing, and air defense activities in Northern Luzon and Luzon Strait in the upcoming Balikatan exercise. A maritime key terrain security operations drill in Batanes – a strategically located Philippine island group between Luzon and Taiwan – will repeat similarly to last year’s iteration. Among other means, Pentaleri explained that the MLR is expected to collaborate with Army aviation to maneuver across the islands.
A major joint force air defense including 3rd MLR’s new Marine Air Defense Integrated System and AN/TPS-80 Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar at a training area on the coast of Western Luzon facing the South China Sea.
Pentaleri also highlighted the lessons to be learned from training with Philippine forces, noting their experience in operating in the littoral environment. She further noted the importance of supporting the Armed Forces of the Philippines modernization efforts through these exercises.
This new littoral rotational force comes amid the activation of a warehouse in Subic Bay to stage equipment under Marine Corps Prepositioning Plan-Philippines.
American forces have been increasingly involved in exchanges and exercises with their Philippine counterparts amid South China Sea tensions between Manila and Beijing. Following a series of incidents in the fall of 2023, Marine Corps MQ-9As deployed to a Philippine Air Force base to provide intelligence support to Manila.
