The military today simulated repelling a Chinese sea assault, integrating shore-launched missiles and drones with fast patrol boats to stop an attempted invasion.
Taiwan routinely holds drills ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, which begins next month, but these are the first to take place in front of the media since China held its most recent round of war games around the nation in December last year.
Any invasion of Taiwan by China would be very difficult given that the People's Liberation Army would have to first cross the Taiwan Strait and then attack the limited number of beaches on the nation’s main island that are suitable for landing their forces.
Photo: Wu Che-yu, Taipei Times
The drill, on a beach that forms part of Kaohsiung’s Zuoying (左營) naval base, imagined a scenario where Taiwan first detects an unknown boat loitering off the coast and then sends drones to investigate.
Taiwanese attack drones and fast, missile-armed patrol boats are then pressed into action. Snipers help pick off enemy forces and domestically made anti-ship Hsiung Feng missiles take aim from concealed mobile launchers on the beach.
The near-shore exercise with coordinated strike missions was able to build a "kill chain and effectively execute joint interceptions," said a Marine Corps officer, speaking while fully masked and not providing his name for security reasons.
"This demonstrated the navy's multi-layered, multi-wave defensive combat effectiveness, as well as the Marine Corps’ combat power and resilience in rapidly taking control from both the sea and the land," he said.
President William Lai’s (賴清德) administration, as part of a defense-modernization program, has pushed for more combat-realistic training that relies less on set-piece performances and more on simulating actual combat.
Earlier this week, the military showed how its US-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be used to hit the Penghu islands in the Taiwan Strait should Chinese forces seize them first and use them as a base to launch strikes on Taiwan proper.
The Lockheed Martin HIMARS, one of Taiwan's newest and most precise strike weapons, has been used extensively by Ukraine against Russian forces.
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