How does the Philippines make sense of future warfare?

18 October 2023

The Philippines’ National Security Policy 2023-2028, released this August, acknowledges that defending national interests will require Manila to embrace the concept of multidomain warfare. This new commitment confirms the Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz’s historical observation that war is a dialectic struggle of extremes; belligerents are willing to use everything at their disposal to wear down the physical and moral force of their opponents until they capitulate. The ongoing Russo-Ukrainian and Israeli-Hamas wars demonstrate how direly necessary it is for Indo-Pacific states like the Philippines to prepare for wars that will likely employ a multidomain approach to warfare.

While there is much focus on how China is revising the status quo below the threshold of war, it is important to recognise that regional states are adapting to China’s actions, especially as its military is gaining the capability to face the United States and its allies head-on. If this trend stands, how to fight wars in case peaceful solutions fail is a valid concern if one is to truly uphold a rules-based order. For the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), whose government recently announced its intention to finally focus on external defence, preparing for the future of warfare will not be an easy feat.

Future warfare — on paper and in reality

Warfare is increasingly taking on a multidomain character — militaries will compete against each other through land, sea, air, cyber, electronic, and space-based systems at different times using certain or multiple domains.

Philippine political leaders must carefully understand what multidomain warfare implies for national security; military leaders must do what they can to show the risks of not understanding it.

For instance, a sea-based threat detected by a space satellite or land-based radar, and sensed and targeted by a sea-borne drone can either be neutralised singly by a land-based or sea-based anti-ship cruise missile or both. Militaries might even cook the enemy’s detection software with the help of cyber tools or use those cyber and electronic capabilities to render the threat’s battle systems useless. The aim nonetheless is to either gain sea control or land projection or both as far as the political objective goes.

We can see parallels in the Russo-Ukrainian War. Thanks to Western-assisted, satellite-based information-sharing, Ukraine’s drones struck down Russian positions and even assassinated commanders, leading to hysteria among the Russian ranks. Ukrainian Armed Forces also used Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites to bolster information advantage to move, shoot, and communicate in land and air engagements.

Another devastating hit to Russia’s power projection was when Ukrainian rocket forces sank Russia’s Black Sea Flagship, the Slava-class cruiser Moskva, using a Neptune anti-ship cruise missile fired off from the coast. According to reports, a combined Western-provided naval intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and clear clouds enabled Ukrainian land-based radars to sense, detect, target, and strike the Moskva. Kyiv’s Turkish-made TB2 drones have also reportedly struck down Russia’s ships in the Black Sea, which added to the toll of losses for the Russian Navy thanks to capable ISR. These attacks effectively hurt Russia’s momentum for complete sea control and power projection along the Black Sea coast.

Hamas successfully designed a ‘shock and horror’ multidomain offensive operation in Southern Israel on 7 October this year, offering a cautionary example. As its rocket swarms exhausted the Iron Dome System and kept the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) busy, Hamas employed paraglide forces to infiltrate nearby Israeli military bases in Gaza, bulldozed the wall separating Palestine and Israeli territories, and inflicted blitzkrieg-like attacks in Israeli cities. In response, the IDF implemented the Operation Swords of Iron in the Gaza Strip, combining air and ground attacks to neutralise targets. Multidomain tactics are becoming the very standard of modern warfare.

Lessons learned?

AFP Chief of Staff Lt Gen Romeo Brawner Jr. remarked that the most significant lesson in the Russo-Ukrainian war is that “even with a few modern weapons, the more important thing is the will to fight”. While the will to fight is necessary, one cannot be misled that it is the only ingredient in multidomain warfare. An important lesson from the two ongoing wars is that multidomain warfare is ultimately about whose battle systems would be competitive enough to prevail over the other. Defence and offence concepts, however, are devils in the details.

For example, Ukraine defending key cities and roads from the Russians and launching a counteroffensive to take back Crimea to restore the pre-2014 border are entirely different military operations. The latter proved more deadly and expensive than many expected. As Stephen Biddle expressed, the state of things turned out to be a messy picture similar in some ways to the attrition of the First World War, with dug-in trenches, artillery barrages, close-quarter fighting, and high casualty rate as the norm. Moreover, the IDF’s Sword of Iron operation might be seen as an offensive move at the operational level, but it is nevertheless a defensive move at the strategic level. Like any urban warfare in the past, this multidomain offensive will likely be met with high casualty rates — but an accepted risk by the IDF to achieve defensive goals.

In the AFP’s case, there is no doubt that it will defend the Philippine archipelago and adjacent sea lanes. But a scenario involving having to design and conduct a counteroffensive, perhaps in collaboration with the US and regional partners against a common adversary to restore the pre-war order, should also be part of the overall defence strategy. Filipino military planners should exhaust scenarios that involve reconciling the offence and defence balance from tactical, operational, and strategic standpoints.

The AFP, which has been Army-centric for a long time due to internal threats, is finally looking to address the implications of multidomain warfighting from various angles. As one Philippine Army officer stressed, military leaders and planners must be “service-agnostic”. This means that military services must give way to thinking about which of them can best address specific threats.

In this case, it makes sense to reconsider the idea that external defence is all about focusing a majority of resources on the Navy and Air Force at the expense of the Army. Conversely, Filipino decision-makers must consider that all services matter in a way that is palpable to neutralising specific threats in defensive or offensive operational designs. This can be sorted by asking what kind of victory it wants to achieve as it fights.

This holds implications for Manila’s priorities in its defence modernisation. Philippine Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. said Manila is now seeing the need to re-strategise its defence modernisation program towards interoperability and “not one that is just for show”. The AFP needs more than the procurement of platforms; it should emphasise capability — an ecosystem to accomplish tasks defensively and offensively, from detection and strike to assessment.

For instance, rethinking submarine acquisition in favour of land-based anti-ship cruise missile systems that can strike from a long distance with good detection capabilities and sufficient munitions makes sense for a country with a struggling defence budget if the aim is less to fight wars than it is to project symbolic power at sea. Should distance forbid land-based missile systems to detect and strike due to lack of drones or over-the-horizon radars, then stealthy submarine or air-to-surface fighter strikes — with proper logistic support and sufficient munitions — should do the trick. The key is to keep looking for solutions.

Making sense of future warfare

Even as the AFP struggles, all is not lost. It must develop its strategic culture via training and wargames to build a multidomain defensive and offensive capability.

This May, the Philippine Navy was supposed to display its newest combat capabilities before the commander-in-chief. However, reports say the target drone for the Mistral 3 surface-to-air missile live-fire exercise failed to launch from its platform. While embarrassing, it is better to be embarrassed and improve on the gaps now than in the time of battle — the dead can tell no tales.

Training with and support from allies and partners are critical. The AFP recaptured one of its critical installations together with the Australian Defence Force from a fictional adversary during the first “Alon” (Waves) Exercise. While this mock operation is a success and instrumental for deterrence, it is wise to, perhaps unwittingly, redo this scenario that leads to failure.

The key to winning in a messy future warfare is learning and adapting. As the late strategist Colin Gray once asserted, “victory in battle does not ensure strategic or political success, but defeat all but guarantees failure”. Philippine political leaders must carefully understand what multidomain warfare implies for national security; military leaders must do what they can to show the risks of not understanding it. Therefore, Manila must embrace the harsh reality of not just keeping up with other regional militaries; it should ultimately build a capability of compelling adversaries should war become inevitable.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.

Author biography

Joshua Bernard Espeña is a resident fellow at the Manila-based think tank International Development and Security Cooperation (IDSC). He is also a lecturer of international relations at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines. He is the co-author of "The Rise of Philippinedization: Philippinedization is not Finlandization" (2021). Image credit: Wikimedia/Philippine Navy.