USNI News

The Philippine Navy sank a decommissioned tanker in the South China Sea with an anti-ship cruise missile during Balikatan 2024’s climactic maritime strike exercise on Wednesday morning.

BRP Jose Rizal (FF-150), the flagship of the Philippine Navy, fired a C-Star anti-ship cruise missile at the decommissioned tanker BRP Lake Caliraya (AF-81). Donated to the Armed Forces of the Philippines by the Philippine National Oil Corporation in 2014 for underway replenishment duties, the Chinese-built tanker was decommissioned in 2020 due to maintenance issues.

Lake Caliraya was scheduled to be sunk during last summer’s Marine Aviation Support Activity, but bad weather canceled the SINKEX and beached the tanker. For Balikatan 2024, the ship was reused as a target.

Among other highlights, the exercise saw the first deployment of the Army’s Mid-Range Capability in a simulated maritime strike on the first island chain and the refinement of a combined sensor-to-shooter kill-chain network between the three participating forces.

“This exercise was about the collective capability of our combined fires networks and increasing interoperability to sense and shoot targets from a variety of Philippine, U.S. and Australian land, sea and air platforms,” said Marine Col. Douglas Krugman, the U.S. director of the drill’s combined coordination center, in a press release.

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