Secretary of War Hegseth Meets Philippine Defense Secretary Teodoro: Alliance Command-and-Control Modernization and EDCA Sites
According to a U.S. Department of War readout, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth met Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro Jr. on October 28 in Cebu, the Philippines, on the sidelines of the ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meeting-Plus, to discuss deepening the U.S.-Philippine alliance.
The readout said the two agreed to accelerate, on a sprint timeline, the modernization of the alliance's command-and-control architecture, reviewed progress at the agreed locations under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), and discussed increasing U.S. security cooperation funding for the Philippines. The Philippines is a U.S. treaty ally in the Indo-Pacific, and EDCA allows U.S. forces rotational access to agreed locations in the Philippines.
The same day in Cebu, Hegseth also joined a meeting of the U.S., Japanese, Australian, and Philippine defense chiefs and took part in the ASEAN-U.S. defence ministers' meeting, where he proposed developing a U.S.-ASEAN framework for defence cooperation to guide ties over the coming years.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：位于弗吉尼亚州 Arlington 的五角大楼，美国战争部总部。美国空军 Kenneth Hammond 摄，公共领域，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, headquarters of the U.S. Department of War. U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Ken Hammond, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
