DND chief: Task force with US to beef up PH disaster response
Philippine News Agency
By Priam Nepomuceno
November 3, 2025, 1:05 pm
MANILA -- The newly established joint task force with the United States will help boost the Philippines' capabilities to respond to calamities, according to Department of National Defense (DND) Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr.
In a press briefing in Makati City Sunday, Teodoro said Task Force Philippines will ensure an "immediate and quick response to the natural calamities that we are facing."
"[The] task force has a specific mission, and that mission is to converge with our resilience both internally and externally, and it is —shall we say— an efficiency mechanism to funnel all the activities," he said.
Task Force Philippines was formally established last week following a meeting between Teodoro and US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on the sidelines of the 2025 ASEAN Defense Ministers' Meeting (ADMM) and ADMM-Plus in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Teodoro said the task force is an operational arrangement between the US Indo-Pacific Command and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) that will "converge all our bilateral activities."
The newly activated AFP Strategic Command will be part of the task force, he said.
Teodoro added the creation of Task Force Philippines is part of the country's 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) with the US.
"All these task forces are under the different articles of the MDT, which we have with the United States," Teodoro said. "That is the basis of the task force."
In their bilateral meeting, Hegseth and Teodoro also discussed key regional security issues, including China's coercive actions in the West Philippine Sea and the larger South China Sea.
Both officials underscored the importance of continuous consensus-building efforts among regional partners. (PNA)
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