Naval Station San Miguel

The base was named for the tiny fishing village of San Miguel which is adjacent to the southern end of the station.

The base is located in a semicircular bowl of 1,737 acres (7.03 km2), surrounded by mountains on three sides, and the South China Sea on the fourth.

The primary purpose of the station was to provide communications to U.S. Navy ships operating in the area of the Philippines.

During the Vietnam War, all communications from Vietnam to the Continental United States were routed first through here by an undersea cable from Nha Trang, then forwarded to Naval Link Station Mount Santa Rita, then to the Dau relay facility at Clark AFB, and finally to the HF transmitter site at the U.S.

Although the Scarborough Shoal is well within the estimated 290 kilometer range of the BrahMos, the fact that the armed forces of the Philippines currently lacks over-the-horizon radar implies that drones (including the Boeing Insitu ScanEagle) and maritime patrol aircraft (including the ATR 72) will instead be used for reconnaissance and target acquisition, thus limiting the effective range BrahMos of in a combat situation.