Special Report
The Philippines’ security sector looks to a future of indigenous drone technology
WESTERN OUTPOST. Philippine soldiers stationed on Likas Island stand guard in June 2025. File photo by Bea Cupin/Rappler
MANILA, Philippines – It was a hot weekend morning at a remote military camp in the Philippine mainland and a few officers and soldiers gathered there were both nervous and excited.
Philippine security and defense personnel were set to test homegrown drone technology. An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) whizzed across the horizon. A few seconds later, the test mission was done and dusted — and passed with flying colors.
Cheers erupted, congratulations were exchanged. Several observers stood, beaming — this journalist among them.
Rappler was among a handful of people who witnessed the test run. For security reasons, we have withheld other details related to the UAV test and its outcomes.
For soldiers behind the test run, it meant finally being able to breathe easy. For the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), it was a few steps forward into the future of warfare: unmanned systems produced at scale domestically.
To understand why Philippine-made UAVs are important for the AFP, it’s important to acknowledge the gaps that the Army, Air Force, and Navy must bridge to protect the Philippines’ vast spaces from land to air to sea. Maritime coverage is especially critical, given the military’s shift in focus to external defense.
For the Navy, the challenge is clear: there’s a gap between the information that outposts and stations collate through radars and other systems and what needs to be checked with their own eyes, several officers told Rappler.
In some cases, foreign vessels in the Philippines’ maritime spaces would routinely go dark from the Automatic Identification System or AIS. That’s when visual confirmation — through manned or unmanned vessels or aircraft — is needed.
Sending a Navy ship is ideal but not always possible, and there’s the problem of availability and potential travel time. At sea and on land, timeliness is critical to intelligence and domain awareness.
So imagine this future for a military that once lagged way behind its regional neighbors: homegrown UAVs and tech that’s produced locally and for much cheaper than the drones the AFP already procures from foreign partners and allies.
From where we stood in that test run, it’s a future that’s closer to reality than mere imagination.
In October 2025, the Philippine Navy hosted a Drone Warfare Summit for the first time.
The push to pursue an indigenous UAV program and to innovate is spurred by the lessons from a war halfway across the world.
Ukraine has mastered, within just a few years, the technology needed to develop and scale drone warfare in the middle of Russia’s war against it. The Russia-Ukraine war offers another real-world lesson to countries around the globe, according to a study by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
“Equipment attrition rates experienced in the war in Ukraine and the high volume of munitions expended there and in other theaters have spotlighted the challenges that industry faces in generating the manufacturing capacity to meet armed forces’ demands. These and other issues have prompted governments to dedicate attention and resources to develop defense industry strategies and policies,” read a report under its Military Balance+ project.
By the Philippines, for the Philippines
On the ground, the challenges for the Philippines are quite different.
Inside Camp Cape Bojeador in Burgos, Ilocos Norte, for instance, are snapshots of the AFP’s past — armored vehicles, an old Blue Diamond fighter plane, and platforms that were once produced in the country for its own military’s use.
Vicente Blanco III, the now-retired Marine Corps commander who moved the 4th Marine Brigade from southern Mindanao to a province way up north, took pride in touring guests around the military park. It was Blanco who near-singlehandedly curated and sourced the different platforms, saving a handful from the doom of being turned into scrap metal.
We visited the camp in 2024, when he talked aloud about his hopes that one day, the military’s toys will be Philippine-made again.
Months later, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed into law the Self-Reliant Defense Posture (SRDP) Revitalization Act, which seeks to take off from what his namesake and father, the late dictator, pulled off before he was deposed: tapping local industry to supply the military its ammunition, vehicles, communication platforms, and clothes.
“We lay today the foundation of resilience shaped by our own ingenuity, our own talent, and our unwavering resolve…. Through this act, we can build on its legacy and expand upon that same vision — a defense posture that is independent, dynamic, and geared to the future,” said Marcos in October 2024, as he signed the bill into law.
The Philippines isn’t alone in crafting a dedicated national defense-industrial strategy, according to the IISS study.
A handful of nations that have published their first national defense-industrial strategy are either allies or military partners of the Philippines — the United States, Canada, and New Zealand. Manila is among several countries around the world that updated defense self-reliance plans after a decade-long gap.
Lucie Béraud-Sudreau, in the IISS review, said the push for defense self-reliance as policy “reflects a shock realization of the demands of sustaining modern high-intensity warfare, and the fragility of supply chains that support weapons production.”
The SRDP Revitalization Act is meant to incentivize investments in defense tech and production through tax breaks and government-backed financing while also barring the sale of these weapons, tech, and equipment to private entities.
It also created a new office under the Department of National Defense — the Office of the Undersecretary for Defense Technology Research and Industry Development — which is meant to further the policy, collate data, spur research and development, bridge public and private, and even set up ties with foreign partners.
“To the private sector, it is an invitation to build an enduring defense industry,” said Marcos of the law.
Yet there have been few updates on how the law, which was meant to make it easier for local manufacturers to supply the military its needs, as well as to revive and spur that industry, has boosted local production.
In the past four years, Marcos has vacillated in his political inclinations, affinity for risk, and even his willingness to engage with the media. But one thing remained: how he frames the Philippines and its place in a region that’s restive at best and volatile at worst.
“The seas around us are arenas of competition and of conflict. Global instability, shifting alliances, and emerging threats demand that we maintain a resilient maritime defense posture,” said Marcos during the Navy’s 128th anniversary last June 9.
Superpower China’s increased willingness to provoke alongside its growing ambitions of dominance in maritime spaces mean that for a country in the literal middle of regional tensions, it’s the Navy’s job to make sure tensions do not rise, even as both deterrence and resilience are in place.
What does resilience mean for the military, exactly?
Marcos’ order as commander-in-chief was for the military, in a worst-case scenario, to be “able to fight and preserve our forces for at least 20 to 30 days” before help from Manila’s friends and allies come, according to then-AFP chief Romeo Brawner Jr. in November 2025.
Thus at peacetime and in the meantime that it is working on manufacturing its own weapons, Manila is seeking to further expand its list of partners it could turn to in both honing its military capacity or in the event of an attack.
The number of military visiting agreements has risen to five from two (a Visiting Forces Agreement with the United States, and a Status of the Visiting Forces Agreement or SOVFA with Australia).
Already signed and concurred with by the Philippine Senate is the Reciprocal Access Agreement with Japan and SOVFAs with New Zealand, Canada, and France. Negotiations for a SOVFA with the United Kingdom are also underway.
Swipe sideways to see the full map.
United StatesTreaty allyVisiting forces pactProcurement and aidSole treaty ally. Visiting Forces Agreement. Up to $2.5 billion in foreign military financing, 2026 through 2030.
JapanVisiting forces pactStrategic partnerProcurement and aidReciprocal Access Agreement. Strategic partner. Most of the PCG’s modern vessels, air surveillance radar systems, and refurbished Abukuma-class warships for the Navy.
South KoreaStrategic partnerProcurement and aidStrategic partner. The Navy’s newest frigates and OPVs, and the Air Force’s FA-50s.
VietnamStrategic partnerStrategic partner since before Marcos was elected in 2022.
IndiaStrategic partnerProcurement and aidStrategic partner. The BrahMos coastal defense missile system.
AustraliaVisiting forces pactStrategic partnerStatus of Visiting Forces Agreement. Strategic partner.
New ZealandVisiting forces pactStatus of Visiting Forces Agreement.
FranceVisiting forces pactStatus of Visiting Forces Agreement.
United KingdomVisiting forces pact (in talks)Status of Visiting Forces Agreement under negotiation.
CanadaVisiting forces pactStatus of Visiting Forces Agreement.
Based on the agreements and partnerships cited in this story.
Marcos has also upgraded political ties — to touch on strategic ties, too — with Japan, Vietnam, Australia, South Korea, and India. Before he was elected president in 2022, only Japan and Vietnam were Manila’s strategic partners outside the US. With several of these countries, the Philippines has close ties for defense procurement and aid.
Japan, for example, is the producer of the bulk of the Philippine Coast Guard’s modern vessels, and more are slated for delivery. The PCG is tasked to patrol the Philippines’ maritime spaces to enforce domestic law. Japan is also where the country’s advanced air surveillance radar systems originate, and from whom the Navy will receive refurbished Abukuma-class warships.
From India, the Philippines procured its BrahMos coastal defense missile system. The Navy’s newest frigates and offshore patrol vessels, as well as the Air Force’s FA-50s, are all from South Korea.
The United States, Manila’s sole treaty-ally, has authorized up to $2.5 billion in foreign military financing to the Philippines from 2026 through 2030.
The IISS, in its report, pointed out that the push to manufacture domestically while also forging ties with partners could be a friction point. “Indeed, most stress the importance of partnerships and cooperation, while simultaneously seeking to strengthen domestic industry,” said Béraud-Sudreau. But she pointed this out: “There is a new sense, however, that even the leading defense-industrial powers cannot manufacture the full range of necessary defense capabilities without assistance.”
For Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr., the focus should not just be on sourcing and producing the military’s needs domestically — as the Philippines simply cannot produce all that its military needs.
Supply chain resilience, Teodoro said, is about ensuring foreign sources are reliable, too, even in the face of disruptions. This would mean then, that the Philippines, in procuring defense items, would consider the alignment of either values or strategic goals, too.
For strategists around the world, the key is interdependence.
Manila’s web of friends and partners — a latticework, as some interlocutors put it — can also be a list from which it can pick out trusted sources of new platforms, technologies, and supplies.
But whether that web is managed efficiently or is sustained beyond 2028, when a new administration takes over, is another matter altogether. – Rappler.com