GENERAL SANTOS CITY (MindaNews/28 February) — The town of Glan in Sarangani province will host the joint Balikatan (shoulder-to-shoulder) military exercises involving naval forces of the Philippines and the United States, officials said.
Preparations for the two-week joint naval exercises have already commenced, with the US Navy, led by Captain Wally Lovely, visiting possible sites for the exercise’s civil-military operations (CMO).
In a statement late Monday afternoon, Glan Mayor Victor James Yap Sr. said the local government unit is thankful the town was chosen as the site of the joint naval exercises that will be held on June 28 to July 9.
“The event would help highlight the town’s growing importance, both from economic and strategic standpoints,” Yap said.
In the 1980s, information swirled that the United States was allegedly eyeing Glan’s Sumbang Point as a strategic future naval base.
Today, Glan is one of the sites in Mindanao with a Coast Watch Station, a facility equipped with radars and communication gadgets, among others, meant for intelligence gathering against threat groups both at sea and in land.
In an article titled “Sealing the ‘back door’ in the Philippines,” Dr. Peter Chalk, a senior analyst at the Research and Development Corp. (RAND), said the core objective of Coast Watch South is to provide a system of “maritime domain awareness” that facilitates the movement of desirable people and goods and contributes to the attainment of peace and development objectives in the western and southern Philippines.
RAND is a global non-profit think tank that seeks to improve policy and decision-making through research and analysis. Its global clients include government agencies, foundations and private sector firms.
The United States has underwritten the installation of the equipment through Department of Defense 1207 funding. This is a Pentagon authorized program that uses defense dollars to perform a State Department function, according to Chalk’s article published at the Strategic Insights of Risk Intelligence in August 2010.
There are three Coast Watch Stations now in Sarangani through the towns of Glan, Kiamba and Maitum.[]
