Philippine warship BRP Jose Rizal launches a C-Star ship-killer missile during the annual Balikatan joint military exercises. New weapons such as the C-Star will make Filipino waters much more dangerous for interloping China - Armed Force of the Philippines.

For a country sharing a long and disputed maritime border with China, The Philippines was seriously lacking in military force for protecting that border.

Emphasis on was. In a dramatic demonstration of Manila’s intention to re-arm for a possible future clash with Beijing over the strategic waters of the western Pacific Ocean, Philippine forces recently fired a SSM-700K C-Star anti-ship missile at a derelict cargo ship – explosively breaking its keel and sinking it.

The South Korean-made C-Star anti-ship cruise missile arms the Philippine navy’s two new 352-foot Jose Rizal-class guided-missile frigates, which commissioned in 2020 and 2021.

The C-Star is among the most important of the many new weapons Manila is buying as part of a sweeping, multi-billion-dollar military modernisation programme. A modernisation programme that could equip the Philippine armed forces to fight side-by-side with US and allied forces in a war with China.

The C-Star is an 18-foot, radar-guided sea-skimming missile that travels as far as 112 miles at wavetop height with a 550-pound warhead, aiming to strike an enemy near the waterline in order to inflict maximum damage.

It compares favorably with other anti-ship missiles, such as the American Harpoon, French Exocet and Ukrainian Neptune.

The Philippine navy frigate Jose Rizal fired the C-Star that sank that derelict vessel. It was the “sinking exercise,” or SINKEX, phase of the Balikatan 2024 war game, which saw Philippine, American and Australian troops train for a possible war with China over Taiwan. The exercise began on April 22 and ended on May 8.

The Filipinos didn’t rush into their SINKEX. During last year’s Balikatan war game, Philippine troops teamed up with American troops to sink an old Philippine navy patrol vessel – using American munitions.

The C-Stars that arm the Jose Rizal-class frigates are just the first of a trio of new anti-ship systems on Manila’s shopping list. The Philippines is also buying Brahmos ground-launched anti-ship missiles from India as well as wheeled High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers from the United States. HIMARS launchers fire the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) artillery missile, primarily useful in land warfare.

But American arms-maker Lockheed Martin, which produces the HIMARS, is developing an anti-ship missile that would be compatible with the HIMARS’ rocket pod.

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“Our new equipment will be coming soon,” Philippine army chief Gen. Romeo Brawner said last year.

With C-Star and Brahmos missiles and potentially HIMARS-launched anti-ship missiles, Philippine forces could threaten Chinese ships hundreds of miles from the Philippine coast. The disputed Second Thomas Shoal, the locus of a bitter and escalating territorial dispute between The Philippines and China, lies just 100 miles west of the Philippine island of Palawan.

For months, Chinese coast guard vessels have been battling – with water-cannons and ramming – vessels resupplying a Philippine marine corps outpost aboard an old landing vessel the Filipinos deliberately grounded on the Second Thomas Shoal in 1999.

To be clear, acquiring a few anti-ship missiles doesn’t make the Philippine navy the equal of the Chinese navy. At the end of the current round of modernization in 2028, the Philippine navy should have 18 large armed vessels. The Chinese navy will have hundreds.

But then, the Philippine fleet doesn’t need to meet the Chinese fleet on the high seas and match it missile for missile, ship for ship in a battle for control of the western Pacific. No, Manila’s maritime forces only need to prevent Beijing’s own forces from controlling disputed waters.

Sea-denial, rather than sea-control, is the Philippines’ aim. And for that, a few anti-ship missiles, carried by frigates or tucked into the jungle at tiny island outposts, are the key weapons. It’s not for no reason that the US Marine Corps is reorganizing its entire 200,000-person force for setting up and protecting island missile-bases.

The idea is that hidden missiles could deter the Chinese fleet in peacetime and, in wartime, make coastal waters in the western Pacific prohibitively dangerous for the Chinese fleet.

And Philippine missile crews wouldn’t fight alone. In aligning more closely with the Americans and Australians, among other allies, the Filipinos add their modest – but growing – anti-ship firepower to a growing multinational force. One built around the US Marine Corps and its new island-hopping regiments.

All along the western Pacific, China is pushing. More and more, other countries are pushing back against Chinese expansionism. The Philippines is pushing back with anti-ship missiles.

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