MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Coast Guard will send for the first time one of its flagship vessels to participate in next year’s Rim of the Pacific (Rimpac) Exercise — the world’s biggest international maritime exercise — to become the only foreign coast guard participating in the drills held in the United States biennially, PCG commandant Adm. Ronnie Gil Gavan said on Monday. 

“We will be sending one of our ships to Rimpac to demonstrate that the Philippines is not just a bystander,” Gavan said at the sidelines of a West Philippine Sea forum conducted by think tank Stratbase.

“We will be the first and the only foreign coast guard.”

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READ: PH would no longer send ships to Rimpac exercises, only observers

Security expert Chester Cabalza said Rimpac’s participation of “Asean’s first coast guard and the most active white ships in the region”  demonstrates its “primordial role in regional security amid rising tension in the Indo-Pacific.”

“PCG’s white ships will also demonstrate its active role in maintaining the international maritime rules-based norm in the context of the ongoing disputes in the South China Sea,” Cabalza, president of the Manila-based think tank International Development and Security Cooperation, told Inquirer on Monday.

As to what ship the PCG will deploy, Gavan said, “we’re initially looking at one of our 97-meters,” Teresa Magbanua-class multirole response vessels (MRRV).

To date, the PCG has two 97-meter MRRVs, namely BRP Teresa Magbanua and BRP Melchora Aquino.

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These MRRVs are routinely deployed to patrol maritime features in the western section of the country’s exclusive economic zone, with the Teresa Magbanua becoming the longest-deployed PCG asset in the West Philippine Sea.

The BRP Teresa Magbanua was anchored in Escoda (Sabina) Shoal from April 16, 2024 before returning to Palawan on September 15, after enduring months of China Coast Guard-imposed blockade which left the crew subsisting on rice porridge and rainwater for weeks.

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Despite being at the forefront in countering Chinese aggression in the West Philippine Sea, the PCG is still a civilian agency under the Department of Transportation.

Gavan, however, noted that such drills are necessary as PCG “will be under the Department of [National] Defense in times of war.” /gsg/cb

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