BRP Lake Caliraya sailing west of Candon City, Ilocos Sur. (Photo from the Armed Forces of the Philippines)
LAOAG CITY, Ilocos Norte — Philippine navy missiles began striking the “Made in China” ship which served as a mock target during the highlight event of Manila and Washington’s bilateral drills within the vicinity waters of this province near Taiwan.
The mock target, former BRP Lake Caliraya, was located about 15 kilometers off the coastal city of Laoag, which is only over 400 kilometers away from the southernmost point of the self-ruled island China sees as a renegade province subject to reunification.
‘We want to strike it all day’
On Wednesday morning, a Navy warship equipped with SSM-700K C-Star anti-ship missiles and a fast attack interdiction craft armed with Spike missile started to hit BRP Lake Caliraya.
Philippine Air Force’s FA-50 fighter jets and United States’ F-16, a single-engine supersonic multirole fighter aircraft, will then drop bombs on the target “enemy” ship.
Afterwards, Philippine and United States Army’s ATMOS 155 mm howitzers situated in the shores will also fire but will not directly target BRP Lake Caliraya. These assets were also used on Monday’s live-fire drills here, which simulated the foiling of an invasion attempt.
READ: PH, US war games simulate foiling of invasion attempt near Taiwan
Apart from the howitzer’s live fire drills, the strikes were not visible in the shores due to its distance from the coast.
Select media and Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) officials monitoring the exercise could only watch the strikes through a television screen in an encampment here, hoping that the target could withstand the attacks as long as it can.
“For maximum training value, we want to strike the target vessel all day, not to sink it,” said Col. Francel Margareth Padilla, Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) spokesperson, during a press conference on Tuesday.
Coincidence
The former BRP Lake Caliraya, the Navy’s first and only motor tanker made from China, was decommissioned in 2020.
READ: ‘Made in China’ ship as mock target in Balikatan unintentional—PH Navy
The “coincidence” with regards to the ship’s origin drew ire from Chinese media.
Chinese state-backed tabloid Global Times, in an editorial piece dated April 20, said the move to use the Chinese-made oil tanker as a target of both countries’ anti-ship missiles and bombs shows “clear provocative intent.”
“It’s purely coincidental and it’s really not directed towards the source of such a vessel,” Padilla said of the objections with the mock “enemy” ship’s origin.
