The US Marine Corps and the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force have begun a military drill to simulate the retaking of outlying islands in Kyushu and Okinawa Prefecture in a conflict scenario, the Sankei Shimbun reported yesterday.
The drill, commonly known as “Iron Fist,” has been held in the US since 2006 before being moved to Japan for the first time this year, it said.
The large-scale operations are conducted with a possible “Taiwan emergency” in mind, aiming to keep China in check, it said.
Photo: Screen grab from video on US Marine Corps’ Web site
Unlike last year’s exercises, which focused on on-site training, this year’s maneuvers include strategy formulation and command for each unit by the Japanese and US headquarters, to bolster cooperation between higher-level departments, it said.
Scheduled to run until March 17, the militaries are to conduct landing drills on Okinoerabujima in Kagoshima Prefecture and the town of Kin in Okinawa, as well as F-35 stealth jet target practice on an uninhabited island west of Okinawa’s main island.
A Japanese Army settlement in Kumamoto Prefecture would be used as a maintenance base for helicopters, the report said.
About 600 members of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force’s Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade are to land on and recapture occupied islands participating in the drill, it said.
The Japan Self-Defense Forces and the US military earlier this month conducted the highest-level military exercise, Keen Edge, in which a possible Taiwan contingency was set as the main scenario and China as a hypothetical enemy.
In other developments, the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology is to conduct this year’s first tests of artillery and uncrewed aerial surveillance and reconnaissance vehicles at Jioupeng Military Base in Pingtung County’s Manjhou Township (滿州) next month, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications’ Maritime Port Bureau said.
The institute is to conduct the tests on five days — from Wednesday next week to Friday next week as well as March 13 and March 14 — during which the following areas would be under control: between Taitung County’s Taimali Township (太麻里) and Pingtung’s Majhou, as well as between the northwest of Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and the south of Green Island, the bureau said in an announcement on Monday last week.
On Thursday and Friday next week, tests are to take place from 6am to 5pm and the sea areas are to be closed from midnight to early morning on both days, it said.
For the artillery tests, the bureau marked a danger zone of a minimum radius of 5 nautical miles (9.3km) and said that the maximum projectile altitude would be 7.62km.
For the uncrewed surveillance and reconnaissance aerial vehicles, the marked danger zone has a minimum radius of 12 nautical miles, possibly for conducting high-altitude reconnaissance operations.
The institute previously conducted missile tests in August and November last year.
While it was reported that Hsiung Feng II-E (雄風, “Brave Wind”) missiles were fired in August last year, the military has provided no further information regarding the tests, as well as next month’s tests.
Possible candidates include surface-to-air Tien Kung (天弓, “Sky Bow”) missiles, Wan Chien (萬劍, “Thousand Sword”) cluster-munition missiles and Yu Cha (魚叉, “Harpoon”) anti-ship missiles.
BUILDUP: US General Dan Caine said Chinese military maneuvers are not routine exercises, but instead are ‘rehearsals for a forced unification’ with Taiwan China poses an increasingly aggressive threat to the US and deterring Beijing is the Pentagon’s top regional priority amid its rapid military buildup and invasion drills near Taiwan, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday. “Our pacing threat is communist China,” Hegseth told the US House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense during an oversight hearing with US General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world,” Hegseth said, adding that if it succeeds, it could derail
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
ELITE UNIT: President William Lai yesterday praised the National Police Agency’s Special Operations Group after watching it go through assault training and hostage rescue drills The US Navy regularly conducts global war games to develop deterrence strategies against a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, aimed at making the nation “a very difficult target to take,” US Acting Chief of Naval Operations James Kilby said on Wednesday. Testifying before the US House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, Kilby said the navy has studied the issue extensively, including routine simulations at the Naval War College. The navy is focused on five key areas: long-range strike capabilities; countering China’s command, control, communications, computers, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting; terminal ship defense; contested logistics; and nontraditional maritime denial tactics, Kilby
RSS