The computer-aided wargames and the combat training drills at this year’s Han Kuang military exercises would be extended to bolster the military’s ability to conduct joint combat operations, Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said on Monday.
The focus of the military exercises this year would be responses to “gray zone” activities — provocative or aggressive actions that fall just short of armed conflict — and improving defense resiliency, Koo said.
The emphasis is not surprising given recent allegations of commercial Chinese vessels cutting undersea communication cables in Taiwan’s vicinity and China’s air and naval exercises in waters near Taiwan and in the Tasman Sea without advance notice.
Photo: AFP / Ministry of National Defense
To make the Han Kuang drills more effective, the computer-aided wargames would be extended to 14 days from eight, while the combat exercises would run for 10 days, up from five, Koo said.
The combat exercises are to have five new elements: joint information and electronic warfare, rapid switching to wartime deployments, comprehensive air and missile defense, joint maritime defense and joint ground defense exercises, he said.
Precision missile strikes, live-fire tests and evaluations of the army, navy and air force, as well as simulated confrontations between the combined arms brigades would be retained from past years, he said.
Asked whether drones, including uncrewed surface vessels, would be part of this year’s exercises, Koo said that the military “will showcase [its aerial] drone capabilities,” but not its uncrewed ships, as it has not yet developed sufficient combat capabilities with them.
Lien Chih-wei (連志威), deputy chief of general staff for operations and planning, said that several goals of last year’s Han Kuang exercises, including testing newly acquired weapons systems, would be in the computer-aided and combat drills.
As drones were commissioned into the armed forces not long ago, an appropriate number would be tested based on the size of the nation’s fleet, Lien said.
Asked whether the M1A2T Abrams tanks and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems that the military received from the US late last year would be tested, Koo said they are scheduled to be commissioned later this year and are “not likely to make it” for the Han Kuang drills.
Lee Ting-chung (李定中), who heads the All-Out Defense Mobilization Agency, said that a brigade of reservists would be mobilized during the exercises to help active-duty troops in a simulation of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army using a training drill near Taiwan as cover to launch a surprise attack.
The reservists would swiftly assemble and take part in a resources mobilization drill to practice carrying out requisition and acquisition orders from command centers and repurpose production lines to meet wartime needs, Lee said.
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
A Taiwanese woman on Sunday was injured by a small piece of masonry that fell from the dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican during a visit to the church. The tourist, identified as Hsu Yun-chen (許芸禎), was struck on the forehead while she and her tour group were near Michelangelo’s sculpture Pieta. Hsu was rushed to a hospital, the group’s guide to the church, Fu Jing, said yesterday. Hsu was found not to have serious injuries and was able to continue her tour as scheduled, Fu added. Mathew Lee (李世明), Taiwan’s recently retired ambassador to the Holy See, said he met
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
A BETRAYAL? It is none of the ministry’s business if those entertainers love China, but ‘you cannot agree to wipe out your own country,’ the MAC minister said Taiwanese entertainers in China would have their Taiwanese citizenship revoked if they are holding Chinese citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said. Several Taiwanese entertainers, including Patty Hou (侯佩岑) and Ouyang Nana (歐陽娜娜), earlier this month on their Weibo (微博) accounts shared a picture saying that Taiwan would be “returned” to China, with tags such as “Taiwan, Province of China” or “Adhere to the ‘one China’ principle.” The MAC would investigate whether those Taiwanese entertainers have Chinese IDs and added that it would revoke their Taiwanese citizenship if they did, Chiu told the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister paper