Japan, the Philippines and the United States are preparing for contingencies such as noncombatant evacuation operations (NEO) under their emerging security partnership, with structural and operational groundwork underway.
Manila, Tokyo and Washington have deepened defense coordination through recent trilateral engagements. In May 2025, they held their first joint humanitarian assistance and disaster response (HADR) exercise, focusing on a simulated typhoon in the northern Philippines. The drill highlighted the partners’ growing ability to integrate command and logistics for complex operations, capabilities applicable to an NEO mission, according to the Global Taiwan Institute, a U.S.-based research institute.
“Operations build the muscle memory for complex logistics, command interoperability and rapid deployment that any NEO demands,” Stephen Nagy, an international relations professor at Tokyo’s International Christian University, told FORUM.
Legal frameworks enabling rapid force movement are central to evacuation planning, according to Hiroyasu Harada of Japan’s Network for Security Business and Technology (NSBT). For example, under the longtime allies’ Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), the Philippines has granted U.S. forces access to nine sites in the Southeast Asian nation. That includes sites “advantageously located south of Taiwan, enabling their utilization as forward bases for NEO support, including transportation, assembly and refueling,” Harada told FORUM.
Additionally, the Japan-Philippines Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA), which took effect in September 2025, “facilitates the rapid deployment and transit of forces and equipment, contributing to the reduction of legal and operational barriers,” he said.
The RAA and EDCA provide “critical depth and redundancy for evacuation operations,” Nagy said.
Japan and the Philippines held their inaugural joint training exercise under the RAA in October 2025. Doshin-Bayanihan 5-25 focused on HADR operations in the Philippines’ Cebu province and demonstrated the nations’ growing interoperability and logistical cooperation.
Philippine and U.S. forces, meanwhile, worked shoulder to shoulder to deliver supplies and other assistance to Philippine communities after consecutive typhoons in November 2025.
Allied and partner forces routinely rehearse rapid crisis response and evacuation scenarios during exercises such as Cobra Gold in Thailand, Kamandag in the Philippines and Ulchi Freedom Shield in South Korea.
NSBT analyst John Jacobs noted the role of Taiwan’s civilian-led Global Cooperation and Training Framework (GCTF) in building disaster response capacity. Established in 2015 by Taiwan and the U.S., the initiative partners include Australia, Canada and Japan.
“The GCTF’s HADR workshops, some of which have addressed planning and managing evacuation and shelter facilities, could be expanded to a civil-military platform that explicitly includes NEO,” Jacobs told FORUM.
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