The Ministry of National Defense is planning its biggest war games in more than a year.
The “Han Kuang No. 26” military exercises will take place in April and involve units from the army, the navy and the air force, a defense ministry official said.
“Among the scenarios, we’ll test what would happen if the enemy were to invade Taiwan and how we would seek to repel them,” he said yesterday on condition of anonymity.
He said special emphasis would be placed on “asymmetrical warfare,” in which a smaller force exploits specific advantages to overcome a larger opponent, but he declined to give specific details.
The war games this year will be brought forward to late April to ensure troops may be deployed later in the season in case of typhoons or flooding, a spokesman for the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said.
Lee Yue-chang (李嶽章), assistant deputy chief of the General Staff for Operations and Planning under the MND, said the field training would be held in late April instead of between July and October so that the troops can be better trained in May and June for possible disaster response missions during the typhoon season.
The second-stage computer simulation section of the games will take place in mid-July.
The field exercises will involve no military hardware, while live-fire exercises will be held separately on specific military bases or coastal locations, Lee said.
The last military maneuvers were held in December 2008, but only computerized “Han Kuang” war games were held last year.
In related news, the ministry has not dropped its plan to procure submarines, it said in a statement yesterday.
The ministry was responding to a number of conflicting reports, some of which said it was still interested in purchasing submarines from the US, while others said it had dropped its plans to do so.
The statement said submarines are an indispensable part of realizing “resolute defense and effective deterrence,” and that the military had for years had submarines on its priority procurement list.
“We stand by this procurement policy to demonstrate our determination to safeguard national security,” the statement said.
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