From Sulu to Burgos, the Marines’ Fourth Brigade comes home

ILOCOS NORTE, Philippines – For most military officers, homecomings happen after decades of service, when they’re finally ready or required to don their rank one last time. 

But for Brigadier General Vicente Blanco III, commander of the 4th Marine Brigade, the homecoming came early and twice over. Just as he earned his first star in late 2021, Blanco prepared for a major task, moving the brigade from the country’s southernmost to its northernmost frontier. 

“This should have happened a long time ago, after the World War. You should have seen your Marines, your Army forces, here in this part of the region,” Blanco told reporters in mid-June, as the 4th Marine Brigade wrapped up a live fire exercise in its headquarters in Camp Cape Bojeadorm, Burgos, Ilocos Norte. 

The Marines have slowly but surely made their home in the sleepy town of Burgos. 

Blanco, a native of Ilocos Norte, has been in charge of transforming the area. 

After over six years in Sulu, the brigade arrived in Burgos in late 2022. Back then, there was nothing much but an irregular oval lined with stones, and a vast span of land that was used sporadically as temporary encampments of the different services in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). 

Today, the 4th Marine Brigade is a hub of activity. 

The first thing that catches your eye, after entering its threshold, is a display of long-decommissioned and retired AFP assets – howitzers from World War II, the Air Force’s once-majestic F-5s, military trucks made in the Philippines, and even old V150s similar to the ones Blanco used in his younger years as a Marine. 

Beside the tourist-friendly military park is an obstacle course constructed during Balikatan 2023 – a joint effort of the Philippine and US Marines. Left of the park is a multipurpose hall, the Marines’ barracks, and a small driving range. 

The rock-lined oval is much-improved: it’s now regularly shaped, and its perimeter paved with concrete. Two concrete bleachers flank the oval from the left – funded by nearby local government units. Two more were being constructed when Rappler was in the camp, this time funded by Ilocos-based business. 

Most of the structures have been built through the support of the President’s son, Ilocos Norte 1st District Representative Ferdinand Alexander Araneta Marcos III. 

It hasn’t been a bad two years at all for Blanco and his men – in their (and his) grand homecoming. But putting together a military park that brings in tourists obviously isn’t the main goal of this Marine Brigade. 

The contingency 

What comes with moving from Luuk Town in Sulu to Burgos in Ilocos Norte is the relearning of “old” tricks. 

“Territorial defense is supposedly our number one task. It so happened that for the past many decades, your Marines have been in the south, [focusing on] counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism. It’s like nakalimutan na namin ‘yung number one task namin (It’s like we forgot our number one task), which is territorial defense operations,” explained Blanco. 

For years, most of the AFP Marines, especially, had been deployed to provinces where the Philippines battled Asia’s longest communist insurgency and terror threats in parts of Mindanao. 

“As of now, hindi na kami kailangan doon ngayon (we’re no longer needed there) for counter-terrorism purposes. So we were deployed here for that purpose—to establish a credible territorial defense,” he added. 

The 4th Marine Brigade, after all, was born in Sulu. In 2019, it was activated following the deactivation of the Philippine Marine Corps Ready Force-Sulu. A year later, in December 2020, the 4th Marine Brigade went from a provisional to a regular brigade of the Marine Corps.

From September to November 2022, the entire brigade finally moved into its new home in Ilocos Norte. 

Blanco will readily admit that this has not been easy—for reasons opposite their American counterparts’ transition from wars in the Middle East to littoral warfare.

The move from Luuk to Burgos means they now have an even more vast area to worry about. 

“When you talk of Sulu, when you talk of Mindanao, these are small unit operations, counter-terrorism. But when we talk of territorial defense operations, you transition into a sort of a conventional warfare wherein you talk of larger formations. So, it was not really easy for us to transition,” he said. 

All is calm in the northern front, for now, at least. Blanco, as all other residents of Ilocos Norte, or Apayao, or Cagayan, or Batanes, hope it’ll stay calm forever. 

But the tall and tanned Marine general said they’re ready for what may come. 

“We are always prepared. Our battle cry is ‘the most ready force.’ We look at ourselves as the contingency and the national government look at us also as the most preferred [unit] to be used or to be utilized for such contingency,” he added.

As the sun sets and the temperature finally cools over Camp Cape Bojeador, a new wave of tourists arrives to explore and take photos of the military park. A day after the drills with the US Marines as observers, the camp hosted a static display of both Marine Corps’ assets—from their firearms to the different vehicles the Marines use to bring troops around. 

Blanco set up a similar park in Sulu. The goal is the same—to bring the community closer to the Marines and the AFP.

“It’s their first time to see a large formation of military troops. Welcoming naman ‘yung mga taga-Ilocos (Those from Ilocos are welcoming), but to have a more appreciative view of the military, it’s not there. But their heroes are there. Many from Northern Luzon sacrificed their lives. So we endeavor to bring that education here in the military park,” he explained. 

Old dog, old tricks

Taiwan as a flashpoint for tensions in the region occupies Blanco’s mind. From Cape Bojeador, Taiwan’s southernmost point, Cape Eluanbi, is less than 400 kilometers away. In contrast, the 4th Marine Brigade is almost 450 kilometers away from the Marine Corps headquarters in Taguig City. 

“The tension in Taiwan is… we are also concerned as your Armed Forces. We are preparing for any eventualities that may arise. You can say it—it’s [because of] the distance. Malapit lang ‘yung Taiwan (Taiwan is so near). And we need to prepare for it, not necessarily to join the fight,” he explained. 

Blanco explained that being prepared for conflict in areas north of the Philippines also means preparing for humanitarian action. 

“When you see us carrying equipment, loading equipment in our trucks, in our helicopters, doing the amphibious landing, this can be a transition for other operations also. And as far as we are concerned, the tension in Taiwan, if that happens, we will be more concerned about how to assist the Filipinos in Taiwan,” he said. 

But as easily as he talks about Taiwan, Blanco is also quick to put China out of the equation, especially when he’s asked about the bilateral drills with their American counterparts. He said these drills are “part and parcel” of any military’s development, on top of acting as a detterence to would-be trouble seekers. 

“We are not even thinking of China whenever we do exercises or training,” he said. 

It’s not just the Filipinos who are going through a reeducation. 

Rommel Ong, a retired Navy rear admiral, told Rappler in a March 2024 interview that the Indo-Pacific Command, the US unified command that covers most of Asia, including the waters surrounding the Philippines, is “testing” its littoral warfare capabilities. 

“They have redesigned the Marine Corps, from a conventional force to a literal force,” he said.  

Ong explained that for the Americans, this means ditching the conventional “heavy formation” to a more mobile and agile infantry that can be deployed to, say, islands to defend sea lanes. 

It’s a convergence of relearning that makes drills especially important for both sides of the decades-old Philippine-US treaty alliance. 

“Bumabalik sila doon sa…core nila, operating in islands. Bumabalik sila doon,” Ong added. (They are returning to their core, operating in islands. That’s what they are returning to.)

Shift to territorial defense 

The 4th Marine Brigades’ transfer comes as the AFP pivots to external defense—a shift that was articulated in the Marcos administration’s National Security Plan and which will be fleshed out through the Comprehensive Archipelagic Defense Concept, a sweeping plan that ought to lay out how the country can defend and secure all its maritime zones. 

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., an Ilokano just like Blanco, has said that should conflict break out in Taiwan, it would be “very hard to imagine a scenario where the Philippines will not somehow get involved.” 

In Singapore, when a Chinese general implied that Philippine actions in the South China Sea are putting regional peace at risk by bringing in other countries into the mix, Marcos posited that there’s “no such thing as a regional issue any longer.” The Philippines has been upping defense ties not only with the US, but with countries like Japan and Australia, too, among others.

Marcos was specifically alluding to the West Philippine Sea, where Philippine-China tensions have been rising steadily over Beijing’s sweeping claim of those waters. But he could as well have been talking about other flashpoints in the region, Taiwan included. 

Marines—although from a different unit—are also in the forefront of tensions in the West Philippine Sea, under the Western Command. It’s Marines under WESCOM who man the BRP Sierra Madre, a flashpoint for tensions in the West Philippine Sea. 

Inside the multipurpose hall, one of the more prominent buildings inside the camp, is a sparse stage lined with green carpet and a podium bearing the Marine Corps insignia. 

It’s backdropped by a map of the area under the Northern Luzon Command’s responsibility.

A straight line—the 18th parallel—cuts across Ilocos Norte, Apayao, and Cagayan “…that none shall cross the 18th parallel unscathed,” reads a quote, in all caps, across the map.

NOLCOM, which the 4th Marine Brigade is now under, covers a large area of the country—the Ilocos Region, Cordillera Administrative Region, Cagayan Valley, and Central Luzon. Key features in the West Philippine Sea—Scarborough Shoal and the Philippine Rise—are also under its charge. 

Blanco has often visited the province of Batanes, the northernmost of all northernmost provinces in the Philippines facing the Taiwan Strait. 

“We were supposed to be here since yesterday. Pero ngayon lang na-implement ‘to (But it was only implemented now). And in doing so, we need to, again, babalikan namin ‘yung (we are returning to) different doctrines, a different way of doing things,” he said. 

At a time when shifts in geopolitics happen faster and faster, the 4th Marine Brigade’s re-education, to borrow Blanco’s words, needed to happen yesterday. 

The contingency force is here to stay, as Blanco touches base with his roots and as he establishes the 4th Marine Brigade’s new Ilokano roots in Burgos. Two years in, even as the realities of a new role sink in, it’s not so bad of a homecoming after all. – Rappler.com