India–Philippines Strategic Partnership (2025–2026): BrahMos, Maritime Cooperation, and the South China Sea

Policy Update

Ayan Bordoloi

Background

Diplomatic ties between India and the Philippines were established in 1949, and a Treaty of Friendship was signed in 1952, but the relationship was not very intense during these early decades for the next six decades, owing to a number of factors, including geographic separation, competing Cold War affiliations and limited economic integration. The Indian government’s Look East policy, now known as Act East since 2014, began to shift India’s foreign policy and economic focus to Southeast Asia, whereas increased tensions with China in the South China Sea over the last decade reoriented the Philippines’ foreign policy focus toward Asia, which opened the door for greater convergence with India after 2016.

That was a turning point in July 2016 when an arbitral tribunal set up under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) decisively sided with the Philippines against China’s overly broad ‘nine-dash line’ claim in the South China Sea. However, India’s stance on the ruling changed over the years: in 2023, India signed joint statements with the two countries that explicitly mentioned the need for peaceful dispute settlement, ‘particularly the UNCLOS and the 2016 Arbitral Award’ and in 2024, External Affairs Minister Dr S. Jaishankar during his visit to Manila reiterated New Delhi’s ‘very resolute’ stand on the protection of UNCLOS during the visit.

Defence ties, on the other hand, had been institutionalised step by step since the signing of a Defence Cooperation Agreement in 2006 and the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Defence Industry and Logistics Cooperation in 2017. The breakthrough in the relationship was the signing of a contract in January 2022 for three shore-based BrahMos supersonic anti-ship missile batteries by the Philippines that will cost US$375 million, India’s first major defence export, marking India as the first foreign customer for the India-Russia joint-venture missile system.

The partnership peaked with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. visiting India for his first-ever state visit by a Philippine President on 5 August 2025. The visit led to the signing of a formal Declaration on the Establishment of a Strategic Partnership, which is supported by a Plan of Action for the 2025-2029 period, and by thirteen memoranda and agreements in the areas of defence, maritime security, trade, digital technology, tourism, space and culture.

Table 1: Key Institutional Mechanisms Underpinning the Partnership

Source: Compiled from Indian Ministry of External Affairs, Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs, and ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute (2025, 2026).

Functioning

The India-Philippines ties today are built upon three operational pillars: defence-industrial cooperation, maritime security coordination, and an as-yet immature economic cooperation. On the defence-industrial side, the BrahMos contract has come to a platform.

The first missile battery was airlifted to the Philippines in April 2024, the second by sea in April 2025, and the third and final missile battery was on schedule for delivery in September 2025, thus completing the original order for three missile batteries. Since then, India has provided Manila with an Enhanced Range variant of BrahMos, which extends the range beyond 400 kilometres; Philippine Marine Corps units are to reach IOC, and deploy the missile towards Luzon Strait, which is an important strategic waterway in the Philippines.

Regarding maritime security, the two navies held their first ever joint exercise, a two-day Maritime Cooperative Activity, from 1-4 August 2025 within the Philippines’ EEZ in the West Philippine Sea, which coincided with President Marcos’ state visit. Three Indian warships (INS Delhi, INS Kiltan and INS Shakti) accompanied the Philippine frigates BRP Jose Rizal and BRP Miguel Malvar, which were accompanied by the Chinese naval vessels, but the exercise was reported to have been successful and without incident.

This followed the first India-Philippines Maritime Dialogue in December 2024 and a second in March 2026 in New Delhi that will further strengthen cooperation between the coast guards and joint monitoring of South China Sea shipping lanes. In the August 2025 visit, India also formally welcomed the Philippines to join its Information Fusion Centre – Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR) – a platform for sharing information about the maritime domain, hosted by the Indian Navy.

The partnership is also linked to broader multilateral frameworks. The second ASEAN-India Maritime Exercise (AIME) is likely to take place in 2026, the Year of ASEAN-India Maritime Cooperation, which Prime Minister Modi declared, with the Philippines chairing ASEAN this year; it is believed that the exercise will be held nearer to the Philippines’ waters.

Philippine BrahMos units also deployed for the first time into the annual US-Philippines Balikatan exercise in 2026, participating in simulated maritime strikes with an expanded coalition, which for the first time, comprised Japan, Australia, New Zealand, France and Canada. A Joint Working Group on Trade and Investment (JWGTI) and the Philippines-India Business Forum (2025) have started the work for a Preferential Trade Agreement (PTEA) on the economic track, while the Philippines announced visa waiver for Indian tourists from June 2025, which was followed by an India reciprocal move for Filipinos.

Performance

The partnership has performed generally as expected, based on its contractual obligations and diplomatic pledges. In January 2022, all three of the BrahMos batteries were received, and by September 2025, the batteries were all delivered within the stipulated time frame, thereby getting India on the defence supplier list, not just an aspirant. The Indo-Russian joint venture, BrahMos Aerospace, has reported about ₹5,200 crore in FY26 revenues, with the Philippine order considered a demonstration project that has since elicited interest from Vietnam and Indonesia.

Figure 1: Growth in India-Philippines bilateral trade over the past decade, culminating in the US$3.9 billion recorded for 2025-26.

Bilateral trade has increased consistently, from approximately US$1.98 billion in 2016-17, to US$3.05 billion in 2022-23, and is projected to reach US$3.9 billion in 2025-26, as revealed at the 14th JWGTI meeting in Manila in June 2026. Tourism is also gaining momentum: In 2024, the number of Filipinos in India increased by around 12% to nearly 80,000, a figure that the bilateral visa waivers that came into effect in 2025 will likely boost even further.

The pace of trips has increased dramatically, from the single meeting that is customary in previous years to a compressed schedule of the 5th JDCC (September 2024), the state visit and Strategic Partnership declaration (August 2025), the first joint naval patrol (August 2025), the third delivery of BrahMos missiles (September 2025), and the second Maritime Dialogue (March 2026).

Figure 2: Timeline of key milestones in the India-Philippines strategic and defence relationship, 2022-2026.

This level of institutionalised engagement – service level conversations in all three Services, annual Maritime Dialogue and the Plan of Action being rolled out over five years – is a qualitative step up from the “low-politics and episodic” engagement that has typified the relationship for much of the previous seven decades.

BrahMos batteries are now the mainstay of a land-based anti-access/area-denial strategy for the Philippines, allowing Manila to keep track of and, if it chooses, beat back enemy naval activity in the waters that it considers its own without the high cost of building a blue-water navy. The missile system’s successful use in India’s Op Sindoor last May 2025 has been touted as a proof of its operational reliability by Philippine authorities. The joint naval patrol in August 2025 was symbolic in terms of size, but was the first time the Indian Navy had maintained a physical presence inside China’s South China Sea/West Philippine Sea, which showed New Delhi’s willingness to back up its words with action in contested waters.Though the joint naval patrol was of limited size, it was the first time the Indian Navy had maintained a presence in China’s South China Sea/West Philippine Sea, which marked a departure from India’s traditionally measured stance on out-of-area deployments in the contested waters.

The relationship has now become a blueprint to India’s aspirations as a global defence exporter and a concrete manifestation of the Act East policy transitioning from trade diplomacy to solid hard security cooperation. For Manila, relations with India are part of a conscious effort to shift its security alliances away from a treaty partnership with the United States, and to diversify its security relationship with other powers, especially Japan, while continuing to strengthen its security ties with India. But the economic side of the relationship is rather limited when compared to its strategic importance: bilateral trade of US$3.9 billion is far lower than the US$38-40 billion trade that the Philippines conducts with China and the US.

Emerging Issues

• Chinese pushback and regional friction: Beijing has counteraction and rhetoric for each milestone — the PLA Southern Theatre Command’s ‘routine patrol’ in August 2025 and its charge of the Philippines to ‘draw in external countries to stir up trouble’, and the dismissal by Chinese state media of the exercise as ‘more symbolic than substantive’. Individual Chinese commentators have separately described India’s South China Sea strategic partnership with Manila as the ‘extraterritorial’ and ‘irresponsible’ involvement of an actor.
• Lack of economic ballast: The Philippines relationship does not have significant trade and investment flows to support it as is the case with the Indian partnership with several other ASEAN countries. The bilateral trade is still a small portion of the country’s trade with China or the USA; PTA is still in negotiation and not in place, and the partnership is open to being interpreted as security-centric and transactional — not just by the Chinese media, but also by other parties.
• Restrictions on India’s defence-export competitiveness: Apart from the BrahMos niche, India is well-contested by the established western suppliers and newer players like South Korea and Türkiye. The Philippines’ 2023 purchase of the KAI T-50 light combat aircraft from South Korea instead of the Tejas aircraft from India shows that BrahMos’ success has yet to translate into wider penetration of the defence-procurement market in India.
• Engagement continuity threat: The engagement is now in the current direction has been closely linked to the personal choices of President Marcos’ foreign policy. It will rely on whether the next Philippine government, which will go through the coming election cycle, will continue to prioritize sovereignty claims and diversified security agreements, analysts note.
• Calibrated South China Sea posture: India has not yet crossed the line of studied neutrality and has now moved towards an unambiguous stance on UNCLOS and the 2016 Arbitral ruling, but has not gone so far as to openly challenge Beijing over the SCS, due to its own, separate, and complicated relationship with Beijing over the border. That calibration might limit India’s willingness to increase its military presence in the contested waters as its rhetoric and diplomatic backing of Manila grows.
• Bureaucratic and implementation lag: Independent assessments state that the bureaucratic inefficiency on both sides and competition in similar economic sectors like IT-business process outsourcing are headwinds to achieving the full effects of the thirteen MoUs signed in August 2025.

Way Forward

• Institutionalise maritime engagement rather than occasion-link it – shift from one joint patrol specifically orchestrated to a state visit to an annual or biennial schedule of Maritime Cooperative Activities, working up to interoperability, not jumping from one level to the next.
• Continue to focus on the successful implementation of the Preferential Trade Agreement and deepen cooperation in the fields that have already been agreed on by both parties — pharmaceuticals, electronics, renewable energy and digital services — so as to provide real economic weight for the security cooperation.
• Go beyond BrahMos to co-production and technology transfer in coastal radar, ship-building and munitions; build on the BrahMos momentum to push for deeper industrial cooperation and not a one-off transaction.
• Integrate cooperation into enduring institutional structures such as the Plan of Action 25-29, the annual Maritime Dialogue and the JDCC/JDILC mechanisms to decrease reliance on individual political leadership and protect the relationship from the electoral cycle in Manila.
• Extend and intensify people-to-people interactions via mutual visa waivers, ITEC scholarships and increased educational exchange, creating a public constituency for the partnership beyond government-to-government interaction.
• Ensure public messaging and the tempo of activity close to the South China Sea is calibrated to maintain credibilities as a dependable security partner for Manila; and manage India’s parallel and separately sensitive bilateral relationship with China.
• Leverage the Philippines’ ASEAN chairmanship during 2026 and the ‘Year of ASEAN-India Maritime Cooperation’ to host a second ASEAN-India Maritime Exercise and illustrate the ASEAN-India partnership is a complement to India’s wider maritime engagement in the region.

Selected References and Important Links

Sources are listed alphabetically by publisher/organisation, in APA style, with direct links, in line with IMPRI’s Policy Update referencing guidelines.

Council on Foreign Relations. (2026). China in the Indo-Pacific: January 2026. Available at: https://www.cfr.org/articles/china-in-the-indo-pacific-january-2026

Euronews. (2025). India and Philippines Launch First Joint Naval Drill in Disputed South China Sea. Available at: https://www.euronews.com/2025/08/04/india-and-philippines-launch-first-joint-naval-drill-in-disputed-south-china-sea

Eurasian Times. (2025). From BrahMos to Maritime Drills: India-Philippines Military Partnership Redefines Indo-Pacific Security. Available at: https://www.eurasiantimes.com/india-philippines-partnership-redefines-indo-pacific-security/

Indian Council of World Affairs, Government of India. (2026). Decoding the India-Philippines Strategic Partnership: Beyond the BrahMos Milestone. Available at: https://www.icwa.in/show_content.php?lang=1&level=1&ls_id=14515&lid=8909

Indian Defence News. (2026). India Offers Extended-Range BrahMos Missiles to Philippines Amid South China Sea Tensions. Available at: https://www.indiandefensenews.in/2026/05/india-offers-extended-range-brahmos.html

ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute (Arugay, A. A., & Storey, I.). (2025). Levelling Up: The India-Philippines Strategic Partnership, ISEAS Perspective 2025/106. Available at: https://www.iseas.edu.sg/articles-commentaries/iseas-perspective/2025-106-levelling-up-the-india-philippines-strategic-partnership-by-aries-a-arugay-ian-storey/

ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute (Palma, L.). (2026). Slow but Steady: The Evolving Philippines-India Strategic Partnership, ISEAS Perspective 2026/46. Available at: https://www.iseas.edu.sg/articles-commentaries/iseas-perspective/2026-46-slow-but-steady-the-evolving-philippines-india-strategic-partnership-by-lisa-palma/

Lokmat Times. (2026). India, Philippines Explore New Avenues as Bilateral Trade Reaches $3.9 Billion in FY26. Available at: https://www.lokmattimes.com/business/india-philippines-explore-new-avenues-as-bilateral-trade-reaches-39-billion-in-fy26/amp/

Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. (2025). Brief on India-Philippines Bilateral Relations. Available at: https://www.mea.gov.in/Portal/ForeignRelation/India-Philippines-Mar-2025.pdf

Military.com. (2025). China Accuses Regional Patrol in Philippines of ‘Escalating Tensions’. Available at: https://www.military.com/daily-news/headlines/2025/11/17/china-warns-us-carrier-washington-says-allied-patrol-was-safe-and-routine.html

PhilStar. (2025). Philippines, India Complete First Joint Patrol; China Reacts. Available at: https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2025/08/05/2463106/philippines-india-complete-first-joint-patrol-china-reacts

The China Military (Eng.chinamil.com.cn). (2025). Joint Drills of India, Philippines in S. China Sea ‘More Symbolic than Substantive’. Available at: http://eng.chinamil.com.cn/OPINIONS_209196/Opinions_209197/16400457.html

The Diplomat. (2025). India-Philippines Ties Now Strategic Partnership on Upward Trajectory. Available at: https://thediplomat.com/2025/08/india-philippines-ties-now-strategic-partnership-on-upward-trajectory/

The Diplomat. (2025). Philippines, India Wind Up First Joint Naval Exercise in South China Sea. Available at: https://thediplomat.com/2025/08/philippines-india-wind-up-first-joint-naval-exercise-in-south-china-sea/

USNI News. (2025). China Drills in South China Sea During Philippine-Indian Naval Patrols. Available at: https://news.usni.org/2025/08/07/china-drills-in-south-china-sea-during-philippine-indian-naval-patrols

Wikipedia. (2026). India-Philippines Relations. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%E2%80%93Philippines_relations

About the Contributor

Ayan Bordoloi is an intern with IMPRI, currently pursuing his master’s in political science at the University of Delhi. His research interests lies in federalism, tribal governance, and Northeast India’s political landscape.

Acknowledgements

The author extends sincere gratitude to the IMPRI team for their guidance and support along with the reviewers Gautam Shine and Sneha Sharma for their valuable feedback and insights.

Disclaimer:

All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and not necessarily to the organization

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