The armed forces began their annual Han Kuang military exercises (漢光演習) yesterday, drilling troops and weapons mobilization for counter-strikes in the event of an invasion by China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Among the first day’s main activities was a live-fire drill by the big guns of the 21st Artillery Command of the Republic of China Army’s 6th Corps, which took place at the army’s Kengzikou (坑子口) target practice range in Hsinchu County.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) attended the event at the range to observe the firepower of the self-propelled M109 and M110 howitzers, where the troops drilled artillery strikes as part of an anti-amphibious-landing drill.
Photo courtesy of the Military News Agency
This week’s Han Kuang exercises last five days, with the Ministry of National Defense overseeing exercises at military installations and airbases across the nation, including on the nation’s outlying islands.
The National Security Council is also coordinating with the military to hold its two-day “Political-Military Exercise,” simulating cyberattacks against water and electricity facilities, and against central government ministries by China’s cyberwarfare units.
The National Security Council exercises train Web managers and digital security experts to respond to Chinese cyberattacks to get computer networks and Web sites back online.
Another main focus of the first day of the drills was protecting major weapons and maintaining the military’s fighting strength to mount counterattacks in the event of a first strike on Taiwan by the PLA.
Air force bases and radar stations in the west were mobilized for countermeasures, surveillance of enemy advancement and situation assessment, while fighter jets were flown to the mountain cavern aircraft hangars at Hualien County’s Jiashan Air Base.
Defense ministry officials said the military exercises include both active and reserve troops and are larger in scale than last year’s, with drills by the three main branches of the armed forces, and for the first time with the participation of the the Tuo Jiang (沱江) stealth missile corvette and the Panshih (磐石) supply vessel, weapon-carrying drones and US-made P-3C marine patrol aircraft.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
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