Dzirhan Mahadzir – November 2, 2026 10:26 AM
Marine Rotational Force-Southeast Asia is now on its second continuous rotation to the Philippines, the service announced last week.
MRF-SEA held a rotation turnover on Oct. 26. MRF-SEA originally began as a six-month rotational force that deployed to the region from October to March but its mission was extended in April. The force is now providing a continuous presence in the Philippines at the invitation of the country’s government to continue cooperation with its military.
MRF-SEA is one of two rotational forces operating under the aegis of I Marine Expeditionary Force, with the other being Marine Rotational Force-Darwin. Unlike MRF-D, which deploys as a Marine Air-Ground Task Force, MRF-SEA deploys as a scalable task force with its command headquarters being the permanent component. Other Marine units are assigned as and when required.
Before the rotation extension, the command element of the MRF-SEA would move between Southeast Asian countries based on where scheduled activities would take place. Since April, the command element has been based in the Philippines
The current deployment is the sixth iteration of MRF-SEA. The rotational deployment began in 2022. The unit’s presence is designed to strengthen combined readiness and the U.S.-Philippine Alliance, according to a Marine Corps news release, with each rotation building on the relationships and lessons of the force before in an approach MRF-SEA calls “presence with purpose.”
“Our goal was never simply to be present in the Philippines,” said Col. Robert Bunn, commanding officer of the outgoing MRF-SEA rotation. “Presence has to have purpose. Every exercise, planning session and repetition alongside our Philippine allies was an opportunity to become more interoperable, responsive and capable together, progressively getting better with each event. The next rotation now has the opportunity to take those lessons and relationships to move the alliance another step forward.”
The previous rotation of MRF-SEA saw the force train alongside Philippine troops during Balikatan 26, KAMANDAG 10 and a series of bilateral events through the Archipelagic Coastal Defense Continuum (ACDC). The continuum provided recurring training between major exercises, allowing U.S. and Philippine forces to apply lessons from one event to the next. ACDC is is a series of bilateral training activities and subject matter expert exchanges that support Philippine Marine Corps modernization efforts and the Philippine Marine Corps’ Archipelagic Coastal Defense Concept along with strengthening combined readiness between U.S. and Philippine forces
Training throughout the previous MRF-SEA rotation included command and control, sensing, fires integration, maritime domain awareness, aviation, communications and unmanned systems.
Marines also tested how forces and equipment could move, communicate and operate across the Philippines’ distributed and archipelagic terrain. This included testing the mobility of the AN/TPS-80 Ground/Air Task-Oriented Radar as part of ACDC training and movement of the Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS) and Marine Air Defense Integrated System (MADIS) from ports to distributed exercise locations as part of KAMANDAG 10.
The incoming rotation will continue the progression of the U.S.-Philippine partnership through ACDC and Exercise Balikatan 27, according to the release. Training will continue to focus on operating across distributed and archipelagic terrain, strengthening the ability of U.S. and Philippine forces to coordinate, maneuver and sustain operations across geographically dispersed locations. Marines and sailors will also continue bilateral humanitarian assistance, disaster response and crisis response training.
“Our Marines and sailors are inheriting more than a mission, they are inheriting momentum,” said Col. Coby Moran, commanding officer of the incoming MRF-SEA rotation. “We will build on the relationships, lessons and interoperability developed by the Marines and sailors before us and continue working shoulder-to-shoulder with our Philippine allies.”
Moran previously operated in the Philippines, leading a I MEF technical assistance and advisory team in April that oversaw a maritime prepositioning force offload at the Port of Cagayan de Oro, Mindanao, Philippines. The event was the first MPF offload at Mindanao, according to a Marine Corps news release at the time.
The offload saw roll-on/roll-off cargo ship USNS Sgt. William W. Seay (T-AKR-302) transport vehicles and equipment to I MEF, which was preparing for Exercise Balikatan 26 in the Philippines.
“MPF operations are a unique capability of the Marine Corps,” said Moran in the release. “They allow us to deliver capabilities anywhere in the world, providing critical combat power to Marine air-ground task force commanders.”
The Marine Corps has not disclosed whether MRF-SEA will now only focus on the Philippines or whether it will continue leading Marine Corps engagement and activities with other countries in the region alongside its activities in the Philippines.
Dzirhan Mahadzir
Dzirhan Mahadzir is a freelance defense journalist and analyst based in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. Among the publications he has written for and currently writes for since 1998 includes Defence Review Asia, Jane’s Defence Weekly, Navy International, International Defence Review, Asian Defence Journal, Defence Helicopter, Asian Military Review and the Asia-Pacific Defence Reporter.
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