CAMP AGUINALDO, Quezon City—The Philippine Navy is set to host this year’s iteration of the PH-US Exercise SAMASAMA that is scheduled from 02 to 13 October 2023 at the Naval Forces Southern Luzon (NFSL) Area of Operations.
SAMASAMA is a bilateral exercise between the United States Navy (USN) and the Philippine Navy (PN) that aims to further strengthen international defense cooperation and advance a rules-based international order.
The exercise activities were designed to further enhance the PN’s naval warfare capabilities as the country’s offshore combat force for maritime security operations. They will cover the fundamentals of anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, anti-air warfare, and electronic warfare. The interoperability exercises with the USN will focus on warfighting serials. The training will also strive to further improve maritime integration and combined interoperability with the Japan Maritime Self Defense Force (JMSDF), Royal Australian Navy (RAN), Royal Canadian Navy (RCN), and the United Kingdom (UK) Royal Navy through subject-matter expert exchanges (SMEE) and humanitarian assistance and disaster response (HADR) table-top events.
The French Navy (FN) and Royal Australian Navy (RAN) will send personnel to join the SMEEs while the Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN) and Indonesian Navy (IN) will be in the exercise as observers.
Terms of Reference with the participating non-Status of Visiting Forces Agreement Partner countries were already approved and signed in accordance with Philippine laws.
The Opening Ceremony on 02 October 2023 will be at Headquarters, Philippine Navy, with VAdm Toribio AdacI Jr PN as the Guest of Honor and Speaker. It will close on October 13.///
