The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) is creating a Japanese inspired command which will be in charge of military exercises of Filipino troops and foreign allied forces.

In an interview with reporters in Camp Aguinaldo on Wednesday night, AFP Spokesperson Col. Francel Padilla said the idea for the creation of the new "strategic defense command" comes out with the transparency initiatives of the AFP.

"It all comes out with our transparency initiatives... So with all of these things, the fusion of all of this comes to mind. It's the same as what Japan has. It's easy for them to react. Not only for defense, but also for incidents, for HADR. So this will actually be a foundation and a basis for us to be able to quickly react to certain scenarios," she said.

"What we're looking at here is we're looking at different best practices of different nations. So we see that it's good in Japan, it works for them. So we'll also take that as a model," she added.

Padilla was referring to the Joint Operations Command (JOC) that was just launched by Japan last March 2025.

Aside from Japan, Padilla noted that the AFP is also looking at the best practices from other nations that they can also use or combine to further improve the creation of the new command.

"The best practices of other countries, we'll also take this and combine it. The overarching premise is we do not reinvent the wheel. So whatever works for other countries, whatever country that may be, we can fuse all of this together to our advantage," she added.

Padilla also emphasized the importance of the creation of the new command noting the increasing exercises and the expanding scope of training that the AFP is continuously conducting with its allied forces every year.

"What we are looking at here is the fusion of our triad. Our intelligence, our Civil Military Operations (CMO), as well as our operations. So that's the fusion of these three, the speedy decision making, that is what we are really looking at here," she said.

The AFP spokesperson confirmed that the military leadership is looking at creating the new command within the year.

"We don't have an actual timeline to this because it will go through the normal process. So for the creation of the unit, we will review everything. Usually, it will go through a provisional stage until such time that we will be able to build this unit," Padilla said. Robina Asido/DMS