Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert Ace Barbers is again calling on the defense department to establish a naval facility in Surigao del Norte under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) to protect the country’s eastern seaboard from smugglers and foreign intrusions.
Barbers made the appeal following the Department of National Defense’s (DND) plan to build a naval facility within the Phividec Industrial Authority (PIA) business complex in Misamis Oriental.
The 3,000-hectare Phividec estate is an economic zone.
According to reports, the EDCA site within the Phividec industrial complex will facilitate logistics functions for both military and civil defense.
Phividec is located 30 kilometers from Lumbia air base in Cagayan de Oro City.
Barbers clarified that he is not questioning the logic and wisdom behind the planned EDCA naval site at the Phividec facility.
However, the lawmaker believes it would be more prudent to keep business and military complexes separate.
Barbers emphasized that they have long been offering their province as a location for an EDCA naval site.
Especially after, on Monday, fishermen recovered a Chinese underwater drone in the waters off San Pascual, Masbate.
Barbers believes that China has likely been conducting extensive intelligence gathering within Philippine waters for some time, possibly including data on deuterium, which is widely used in prototype fusion reactors and has applications in military, industrial, and scientific fields.
In nuclear fusion reactors, it is used as a tracer and is responsible for slowing down neutrons in heavy water moderated fission reactors.