Marine, 3 contractors die in surveillance plane crash in Philippines, U.S. military says
A Marine and three U.S. Defense Department contractors were killed after their plane crashed in the southern Philippines on Thursday, military officials said.
The crew had been on a routine mission providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support “at the request of our Philippine allies,” Maj. Matthew Gregory with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Public Affairs wrote in a news release. All aboard died.
The aircraft went down in Maguindanao del Sur province, on the island of Mindanao, where Moro insurgents have historically been active. The Muslim Moro people are a minority in an overwhelmingly Catholic country. Radical Moro groups linked to the Islamic State and to al-Qaeda have carried out kidnappings along with beheadings and bombings, the Washington Post reported last year.
The identities of the four deceased crew members are being withheld until the families have been notified, Gregory wrote.
The news release said the cause of the crash is under investigation, and an Indo-Pacific Command official reached by phone declined to comment on the matter.
The official said the plane was a turboprop Beechcraft King Air 350.
It’s a tense geopolitical moment in the Philippines, as the U.S. military has become more active there as a bulwark against an increasingly assertive Chinese military in the region’s strategic waterways. Beijing claims almost the entirety of the South China Sea as its own and accuses rival claimants such as Manila of encroaching on its territory.
In 2023, Philippine authorities agreed to give the U.S. military access to four new bases. A rotating force of U.S. Special Operations troops have operated at Camp Navarro on Mindanao since after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to help fight Islamist militants.
The United States penned a $500 million military aid deal in July to modernize the Philippine armed forces because of China’s harassment of Philippine vessels, The Post reported at the time.
On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spoke with Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro Jr. by phone about “the importance of reestablishing deterrence in the South China Sea” and reaffirmed “ironclad U.S. commitment,” according to a Pentagon readout of the call.
During the first Trump presidency, the U.S. government publicly reassured the Philippines that any attack on the country’s aircraft or ships in the South China Sea would trigger an American response under their mutual defense treaty.
U.S. military activity in the region has irritated Beijing. This week, military drills surrounding the Philippines and involving the United States, France and Japan prompted complaints from China’s military. A spokesperson for China’s Southern Theater Command accused the Philippines of “colluding with outside countries” to organize joint patrols that “destabilize the region,” Chinese state media said Thursday.
Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, last week told China that his nation would remove the American-provided Typhon missile system that Beijing has complained about as soon as China stops harassing the Philippines, according to independent Philippines news outlet Rappler.