This month’s annual Han Kuang military exercises are to feature six types of “gray zone” tactics used by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) with the aim of weakening their effectiveness, Chief of the General Staff Admiral Mei Chia-shu (梅家樹) told the military yesterday.
The 41st Han Kuang drills, scheduled from Wednesday next week through July 18, would simulate a Chinese blockade and invasion, with President William Lai (賴清德) on Tuesday saying that Taiwan is already in a “war without gun smoke.”
In a speech broadcast to officers and soldiers yesterday, Mei said that the six types of harassment are: legal warfare, cognitive warfare, attrition, coercion, containment and provocation.
Photo courtesy of Military News Agency
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to use laws to challenge the international community’s ability to intervene in the Taiwan Strait, and uses cognitive and psychological warfare to spread misinformation and weaken the armed forces’ ability to respond, he said.
However, the army would continue to train, and maintain peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, without being provoked or contained, Mei said.
This year’s Han Kuang exercises would mobilize the 22,000 reservists, feature new weaponry and run twice as long as previous iterations, the Ministry of National Defense said earlier this week.
The exercises would be divided into three parts: Simulating a PLA gray zone incursion that escalates into an invasion, practicing coastal combat and repelling an amphibious landing by the PLA, the ministry said.
The drills would include a live-fire portion, and feature a joint command structure and civil-military cooperation, it said.
They would also be combined with the Wanan air defense and Minan disaster prevention exercises to test air-raid, evacuation and urban resilience measures, the ministry said.
Taiwan’s increased focus on gray zone threats and its lengthening of the Han Kuang drills’ live-fire portion to 10 days have been praised by two US defense experts.
Ely Ratner, former US assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, wrote in an e-mail yesterday that the changes “reflect an important ongoing evolution in the strengthening of Taiwan’s defenses and resilience.”
“Taiwan is on the right track to contribute to deterrence,” Ratner said, adding that it should push forward with greater urgency.
John Dotson, director of the Washington-based Global Taiwan Institute, wrote in an e-mail that this year’s exercises would be much more meaningful.
They would be “less scripted,” allowing for “a bit more spontaneity, and the confusion that comes with actual warfare,” Dotson said.
In related news, 41 PLA aircraft and nine naval vessels were detected around Taiwan between 6am on Wednesday and 6am yesterday, the ministry said yesterday.
Thirty of the aircraft crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait and entered Taiwan’s northern, central, southwestern and eastern air defense identification zones, it said.
Flight path charts from the ministry showed PLA aircraft routes that circled Taiwan.
The armed forces “monitored the situation and employed [patrol] aircraft, navy vessels and coastal missile systems in response to the detected activities,” the ministry said.
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