The armed forces are to hold field exercises on Monday and Tuesday in coastal regions dubbed “red beaches” to train defending Taiwan proper against a multipronged amphibious attack, a defense official familiar with the matter said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Live-fire drills are to be conducted on beaches and near shores in New Taipei City’s Tamsui District (淡水), at the Port of Taipei and in Taoyuan’s Guanyin District (觀音), a notice posted on the bulletin of the Fisheries Administration said.
The official said the exercises would test the army’s ability to react quickly and utilize mobile reserves to defend simultaneous attacks by the Chinese military on multiple fronts.
Photo: CNA
In the war game, the Sixth Army Corps would play the defending force and the 151st Fleet would be the aggressor, the official added.
If Beijing were to invade Taiwan, the Chinese military would attack in multiple coastal areas, as few beaches in Taiwan proper are suitable landing sites for amphibious operations, they said.
The field exercises are scheduled to begin the same day as the computer-assisted simulation component of the annual Han Kuang drills, which would conclude on Friday next week, the official said,
Findings from past tabletop exercises and trends seen in the Russia-Ukraine war would be incorporated into the computer-assisted portion of the drills, which would be based on the Joint Theater Level Simulation technology platform, the official said.
The possible landing sites for the Chinese military are dubbed “red beaches” among military analysts, they said.
In 2017, Ian Easton, now senior director at the US-based Project 2049 Institute, identified 14 vulnerable beaches that could be used as landing sites, the official said.
The Taiwanese armed forces recognize that such vulnerabilities exist, but do not agree with Easton’s assessment of their locations and number, they said.
Separately, the Ministry of National Defense last week told lawmakers that the army plans to buy 2,060 light machine guns for combat units for NT$428.9 million (US$13.94 million) over five years.
The weapons would be allocated to enhance frontline units’ firepower and their capability to conduct counterattacks against Chinese amphibious and airborne, air assault, infiltration and sabotage operations, it said.
A public version of the ministry’s proposed budget revealed a flurry of plans to buy arms and equipment amid a planned expansion of the army and marine corps following the implementation of one-year military conscription and the expansion of the reserves.
The budget proposals include NT$521 million for grenade launchers, automatic grenade launchers and pistols; NT$108 million for 107 81mm mortars; NT$232.2 million for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear protective equipment; NT$1.759 billion for 10,000 night vision devices; and NT$22.8 million for 2,000 binoculars.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS