India delivers high-speed missiles to Philippines with the capability to target Chinese vessels

Philippine forces have acquired supersonic cruise missiles from India, enhancing Manila’s ability to target China‘s forces in disputed areas of the South China Sea.

“Its maximum extent in terms of range exceeds the West Philippine Sea,” Philippine National Security Council assistant director general Jonathan Malaya told local reporters, using Manila’s preferred name for the disputed waters. “This is more of a deterrent because we now have several batteries for this BrahMos cruise missile, which is going to be deployed to the Philippine Marines.”

Such a missile force could play a significant role in any possible conflict between the Philippines and China, which has laid claim to vast swaths of the South China Sea and deployed coast guard and maritime militia vessels to enforce those claims at the Philippines’s expense. U.S. and Philippine officials have been working to station additional missile batteries in the Philippines, but the newest offering points to India’s potential as a security partner.

“Now we are also exporting BrahMos missiles,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday to announce the shipment. “The first batch of this missile is going to the Philippines today. I congratulate all countrymen on this.”

Modi announced the delivery of the missile battery, which was developed by a “joint venture” between Indian and Russian defense companies, just days before the launch of large-scale military exercises led by the Philippines and the United States.

“Supplying its finest BrahMos missiles to friendly countries like the Philippines is natural in that sense and in the context of evolving security dynamics in the Indo-Pacific as perceived by Manila,” former Indian diplomat Anil Trigunayat told the South China Morning Post. “China and the Philippines have their own problem-and-sovereignty matrix which has forced Manila to beef up its defenses, including its security partnership with the U.S.”

The deployment of land-based missiles to the Philippines is a key theme of those “mega drills,” which will include participants from France and Australia. The military exercises, widely perceived as a show of force in the context of China’s increasingly confrontational approach in the South China Sea, drew an implicit warning from a senior Chinese military official.

“China … will safeguard its legitimate rights in the face of deliberate violation of its sovereignty, and it will take firm countermeasures against unreasonable provocations,” Chinese People’s Liberation Army Gen. Zhang Youxia, the vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, said Monday at a naval symposium in China.

China has laid claim to the majority of the South China Sea in defiance of an international tribunal’s 2016 ruling against Beijing in a case brought by the Philippines. Those tensions have worsened in recent months, as Chinese forces seek to prevent the delivery of supplies to a Philippine military outpost in the Second Thomas Shoal — and claim the right to enforce former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s “gentleman’s agreement” that Manila would not try to supply the outpost.

“The Philippines keeps denying these common understandings,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Monday. “Breach of commitments and provocations will only escalate the situation and eventually backfire on the Philippines itself. We hope the Philippines will face that squarely and decide sensibly what its action should be.”

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The BrahMos cruise missiles could give Philippine officials a broader range of options that might be deemed sensible.

“If we see something entering our territory as a threat, the BrahMos missile can hit that target the moment it enters our exclusive economic zone,” said Malaya, the Philippine National Security Council official.