The military will launch two large-scale inter-service exercises in an effort to boost operations between the services within the next year, the Ministry of National Defense announced at a press conference yesterday.
One of them is the Hankuang No. 19 while the other does not have any special code-name and is just called an "integrated exercise between the services."
The second exercise will supplement the Hankuang No. 19, providing the military with a chance to correct faults found in that drill.
It is the first time that the Hankuang-series exercises, held annually over the past 18 years, will be supplemented with an exercise on a similar scale.
Hankuang No. 19 will kick off on April 18, while the date for the supplementary exercise has yet to be decided.
A total of 33 exercises are to be held this year, with the Hankuang No. 19 and its supplementary exercise being the largest.
Major General Wang Kuo-chiang (
"The Lienhsing amphibious landing exercise, for instance, will involve engagements between marine troops playing both the role of invaders and posing as defense troops," Wang said.
"The Lienyun parachute landing exercise will also be held in the same mode. Paratroopers have to act as invaders in the exercise. Land forces selected to be the defense troops have to fend off the invasion," he said.
"In the future, exercises of like these will follow the same pattern. We will seek to make these exercises as real as the battlefield."
Other important exercises of the year include the Changching brigade-level command post drill of the army, the joint air defense drill between the services, the Divine Arrow missile test and the Divine Bow missile test of the army, and two other navy missile tests.
It has been a custom in recent years for the ministry to make public its scheduled exercises as part of its efforts toward transparency and to avoid any miscalculations on either side of the Taiwan Strait.
The ministry hopes to establish confidence-building measures with China, something it proposed in last year's defense White Paper. In a recent visit to the US, Deputy Defense Minister for Armament Affairs General Chen Chao-ming (
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