Taiwan has enough long-range precision missiles to defend itself against a possible attack from China, the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday, rebutting reports that simulations showed that the nation’s missile supply was inadequate.
“The military regularly replenishes its precision missiles in accordance with military restructuring plans,” the ministry said in a statement. “The military’s stockpile of precision missiles is sufficient for defensive needs at the present stage.”
It was responding to reports on the results of computer simulations and tabletop exercises held from Monday to Friday last week as part of the annual Han Kuang military exercises, which focus on honing the military’s ability to repel a potential invasion from China.
Several media reports cited unnamed military sources as saying that the war games showed that Taiwan does not have enough long-range precision missiles for an effective defense when facing a “saturation attack.”
In such a maneuver, the attacking side attempts to overwhelm a defender’s ability to respond effectively.
Taiwan needed to learn how to “rapidly improve its combat readiness and its ability to replenish ammunition” through the tabletop exercise, which was conducted under the most stringent scenario — a “saturation attack” from China, the ministry said.
It also denied reports that the results of most tabletop exercises in the past few years have been unfavorable to Taiwan.
“The purpose of the exercises is to identify problems and to solve them. There is no such thing as winning or losing,” it said, adding that all tabletop exercises simulate the most unfavorable battlefield conditions.
Taiwan would deal with intensified harassment from China based on the principles of “no provocation, no backing down” and “the closer the harassment, the more active the response,” the ministry said.
The ministry earlier this month redefined the definition of a “first strike” in its rules of engagement to “the right to self-defense” in the event of an enemy attack, meaning that the military can only fire the first shot when facing a clear act of hostility.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army has increased the frequency of its incursions into airspace and waters near Taiwan over the past few weeks.
On Friday and Saturday, nearly 40 Chinese warplanes either crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait or entered Taiwan’s southwest air defense identification zone.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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