A large-scale tabletop simulation of a war between Taiwan and China conducted in June showed that Taiwan’s eastern flank is vulnerable to Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) attacks, a review of the exercise said yesterday.
The Taipei School of Economics and Political Science Foundation, and cosponsors of the war games made the comments at the launch of a book series detailing the findings of the war games in Taipei.
The simulation suggests that effective countermeasures must be enacted to shield eastern Taiwan from unexpected strikes, as the region can no longer serve as a secure base of operations for the nation’s armed forces, they said.
Photo: Tien Yu-hua, Taipei Times
Evolving PLA capabilities have upended the Taiwanese military’s go-to strategy of concentrating its main forces to defend Taiwan’s western coastline, Council on Strategic and Wargaming Studies chairman Huang Chieh-cheng (黃介正) said.
In the war games, PLA attacks on Penghu County and eastern Taiwan proved extremely dangerous, as Taiwanese forces found it impossible to relocate units to defend the thinly held fronts, he said.
Players assuming the role of foreign allies believed that Taiwanese forces should have held northern Taiwan more strongly, Huang said.
The dilemma of bolstering Taiwan’s northern and eastern defenses is a problem that the military leadership should consider, he said.
Taiwanese armed forces’ long-held assumption that strategic assets could be sheltered in Taiwan’s eastern region is no longer correct, former chief of the general staff Admiral Lee Hsi-ming (李喜明) said.
The PLA now possesses submarines and bombers with the capability of firing cruise missiles from the air and seas east of Taiwan, endangering the fighter jets in the underground hangars of Hualien County’s Chiashan Air Force Base, he said.
Stationing more aircraft at the base would be risky, as they could be destroyed by one missile scoring a direct hit through the mouth of the cave, he added.
Meanwhile, the navy’s strategy to relocate its fleet to the Pacific Ocean would lead to it being compelled to fight a decisive battle with a PLA carrier strike group, or conceding Taiwan’s western waters to the enemy, he said.
The latter scenario would allow the PLA to cross the Taiwan Strait and impose a blockade uncontested, cutting off the Taiwanese navy from its home base, he said.
The navy’s better option would be to deploy in the near waters off eastern Taiwan as an integral component of a joint coastal defense force, he said.
The protection offered by land-based air defense and anti-ship missiles would enable the fleet to contribute to military operations in a full-scale conflict with China, Huang said.
The war games also demonstrated that the Taiwanese armed forces need to establish clear rules of engagement to counter China’s “gray zone” warfare, the organizers said.
The simulation confirmed that the PLA could utilize a pretend exercise to prepare for a full-scale invasion, and that Taiwan’s outlying islands are highly vulnerable to being isolated, they said.
It showed that the nation should enhance its coordination with allies to counter a PLA blockade, as well as cooperation between the navy and coast guard, the organizers said.
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