Japan and the US are conducting joint military exercises with China as a hypothetical enemy for the first time, Japanese media on Sunday cited Tokyo officials as saying.
The Japan Self-Defense Forces and the US military set a possible Taiwan contingency as the main scenario for their highest-level military exercise Keen Edge, which began on Thursday last week and is scheduled to end on Thursday, Kyodo News reported.
Keen Edge is a biennial command post training drill in which Japanese and US military employ computer simulations to practice responses in the event of a crisis or contingency, the US Indo-Pacific Command said.
Photo: AFP
Japanese General Yoshihide Yoshida, the head of the Japan Self-Defense Forces, told a news conference on Jan. 25 that Japan and the US “did not envision a particular country or region” for the exercise, the Japan Times reported.
However, Kyodo News cited “multiple government officials” as saying that China was the hypothetical enemy.
Compared with past exercises, which used tentative names for hypothetical enemies, the current exercise is conducted under a much more concrete assumption, it said.
The Japanese Ministry of Defense is believed to have classified the scenario as a specially designated secret protected by Japan’s State Secrecy Law, it said.
Amid growing concerns that China would invade Taiwan within the next few years, naming a hypothetical enemy indicated a strong sense of urgency shared by Japan and the US, it said.
In previous exercises, Japan and the US used maps that slightly differed from the topography of actual countries to “avoid a backlash in the event the plans were leaked,” but switched to unaltered maps in the current exercise, the Japan Times reported.
Japan and the US have drawn up several joint operation plans in preparation for possible contingencies, with a draft envisioning a Taiwan contingency being completed at the end of last year, Kyodo News said.
The two sides are said to finalize the drafted plan by the end of this year based on the results of the current exercise, it said.
Troops are expected to carry out the plan during the field training exercise Keen Sword next year to verify its efficacy, it said.
A signaling system malfunction disrupted high-speed rail (HSR) services beginning at 8am today, with trains temporarily reduced to three northbound and three southbound trains per hour as authorities conduct inspections. The malfunction occurred on a section of track in Miaoli County during pre-operation checks early this morning, forcing northbound and southbound trains to use a single track, the HSR operator said. The regular schedule has been replaced with three hourly trains offering only nonreserved seating in each direction, stopping at every station, it said, adding that business class cars would still have reserved seating. Departures from terminal stations are scheduled at the top
DRONE CENTRAL: Taiwan aims to become Asia’s democratic hub for drones, with most exports focused on high-quality military-grade models, an official said Taiwan’s drone industry is expected to expand significantly by 2030, producing 100,000 units per month and exporting half of them, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Current drone production capacity is about 15,000 units per month, but the industry can quickly scale up as demand increases, Industrial Development Administration Director-General Chiou Chyou-huey (邱求慧) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s drone output grew 2.5-fold last year to NT$12.9 billion (US$408.3 million) under a government program to develop the uncrewed vehicle sector, he said. The Executive Yuan in October last year approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion into domestic production of uncrewed aerial
VERBOSE VESSELS: A CGA cutter and a China Coast Guard exchanged verbal barbs for more than a day in Taiwanese-controlled waters before the Chinese vessel left The Taiwanese and Chinese coast guards had a standoff near the strategically located Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the north of the South China Sea, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The two sides engaged in intense radio exchanges over sovereignty claims during the 33-hour standoff. China Coast Guard vessel 3501 eventually left the restricted waters, 26.6 nautical miles (49.2km) west of the Pratas Islands, at 5pm yesterday, the CGA said. Lying approximately between southern Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Taiwan-controlled Pratas are seen by some security experts as vulnerable to Chinese attack due to their distance — more than
WARNING: China should stop engaging in actions that undermine regional peace and stability, as it would only build resentment among people across the Strait, the CGA said China has deployed more than 100 navy, coast guard and other vessels in waters from the Yellow Sea to the South China Sea and the western Pacific since US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) met in Beijing, National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said yesterday. “In this part of the world, #China is the one & only PROBLEM wrecking the #StatusQuo & threatening regional peace & stability,” Wu wrote on X. In a separate post, he said Beijing was coercing Taiwan’s maritime domain, calling it illegal and provocative, after the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) expelled a
RSS