This year’s Han Kuang military exercises will emphasize force preservation and homeland defense to stop the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) from crossing the Taiwan Strait, National Security Council Secretary-General Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said.
Koo made the remarks three days before the launch of the annual drills in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the sister paper of the Taipei Times) that was posted online yesterday.
A key objective of this year’s exercise is to test the armed forces’ ability to survive a surprise attack by China with enough assets remaining to conduct counterstrikes, Koo said, adding that various methods would be used to gauge their effectiveness.
Photo: Chen Yun, Taipei Times
Another crucial aim of the drills is to boost homeland defense operations, including air defense and maritime joint interdiction capabilities, he said.
“Should we achieve these goals, we would able to prevent [the PLA] from crossing the Taiwan Strait,” Koo said.
The air force’s ability to persevere against enemy attacks and retain sufficient assets to contest Chinese air superiority would be an important aspect of the nation’s defense, he said.
The field exercises include repelling attacks by simulated Chinese airborne forces as the PLA’s preferred mode of attack appears to be helicopter-based air assaults instead of amphibious landings, Koo said.
“Defending Taiwan would not be a purely military endeavor, but also involve making use of civilian personnel and materiel,” Koo said, adding that this capability would be tested in the drills.
Asked about the sharp fall in the number of countries that recognize the nation’s sovereignty, Koo said Taiwan’s security depends on the international community’s recognition of the nation’s importance to the common good, not the number of diplomatic allies.
Taipei’s stance that Taiwan and China should not be subordinate to one another has gained traction in the international community in large part due to the understanding that Taiwan’s welfare is important to the common good, he said.
Despite Beijing’s claims, the world has rejected the position that the cross-strait situation is an internal issue and has come to recognize that changing the “status quo” by force or intimidation is utterly unacceptable, Koo said.
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