The military plans to establish 21 reserve brigades over the next few years to better train the country's more than 3 million reserve troops for wartime combat missions, according to the military.
The reserve brigades are to exist only for training missions, operating under the Armed Forces Reserve Command (AFRC), the military said.
They are to be different from the normal brigades within the army in that they will not maintain regular troops during peacetime and that they are to be staffed at a bare-bones level.
The intention to establish the reserve brigades was made public on Tuesday by AFRC chief of staff Lieutenant General Lin Kuo-tung (
Lin declined, however, to provide the press with details of the reserve brigade plan, such as the total number of units and their structure. A high-ranking defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Taipei Times that a total of 21 reserve brigades are scheduled to be set up, in accordance with the number of existing reserve regiments across the country.
"Each of the reserve regiments has three battalions. Only one of the three battalions in each regiment now has enough personnel to handle regular training of troops.
By the time the remaining two battalions are adequately staffed, a reserve brigade will have been established," the official said. "The reserve brigades are designed mainly to provide the army with a steady supply of well-retrained reserve troops during both peacetime and wartime," he said.
"The ideas behind the plan are that with the 21 reserve brigades of the AFRC responsible for the recall and training of reserve troops, the army can fully concentrate on the training of regular troops and the enhancement of combat readiness," he said.
"During peacetime, the AFRC will provide the army with well-retrained reserve troops for participation in routine exercises. During wartime, it will keep the first-line troops constantly supplied with reinforcements from the reservists," he said. The AFRC says it has over the past year prepared an emergency recall list of over 710,000 reservists, who are ready to be re-drafted into service when required.
Among those reservists, around 220,000 can be assigned to first-line combat units immediately since they have just been discharged from service or have recently received post-service retraining.
The figure indicates that the country's huge supply of reserve troops -- around 3.2 million in all -- can readily meet the needs of the miltary when it needs to draw on manpower, according to the military.
Meanwhile, the AFRC is also seeking to train reservists in more specialized combat situations, such as urban warfare and operations in mountainous areas, which have typically been restricted to special forces troops.
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