US eyes a Philippine ammo facility as opposition warns of ‘warmongering’

Washington and its allies are drawing up plans to establish an ammunition production facility in the Philippines, a move critics warn would turn the Southeast Asian nation into a logistics arm of US “warmongering”.The proposal emerged last week from the Partnership for Indo-Pacific Industrial Resilience (PIPIR), a US-led initiative founded in 2024 to reduce supply chain vulnerabilities and help allies produce and sustain military equipment closer to potential flashpoints.Members agreed to launch a Japan-led programme to manufacture solid rocket motors and to advance regional cooperation on small military drones, including common standards and shared supply chains, the Pentagon said in a statement on Wednesday.Separately, they agreed to explore establishing a facility in the Philippines to assemble and package 30mm-by-173mm ammunition: a workhorse calibre used across the maritime and coastal defence platforms Manila’s military increasingly depends on.Philippine soldiers load ammunition into an Autonomous Truck Mounted Howitzer System during a live-fire exercise in Tarlac province in 2024. Photo: AFP“The timing is significant,” said Sylwia Monika Gorska, a political analyst at Britain’s University of Central Lancashire whose research spans international relations and East Asian geopolitics.