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China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its
territory, has been staging regular exercises around the island
for the past four years, to pressure Taipei to accept Beijing's
claim of sovereignty, despite Taiwan's strong objections.
Taiwan starts its main annual Han Kuang exercises this month
with table top drills, extended from a more usual five days to
eight given the number of scenarios to be included, followed in
July by actual combat exercises, the ministry said.
Tung Chih-hsing, head of the ministry's joint combat planning
department, told a news briefing the drills would practice how
to speedily respond to one of China's drills suddenly turning
into an attack, something military planners have begun to worry
about, considering their regularity.
How different branches of the armed forces can mount a
coordinated response to a Chinese blockade will be another
focus, Tung said.
The drills will integrate naval, air and coast guard forces,
shore-mounted anti-ship weapons and drones to establish a
maritime "attack and kill chain", he added.
"In addition, (we will) use naval and air forces and coast guard
ships to jointly carry out escort operations" to ensure sea and
air links to the outside world remain open, Tung said.
During one major round of war games around Taiwan in April of
last year, China practiced precision strikes and blockading the
island.
Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine two years ago, Taiwan has
been looking to see what lessons it can learn and integrate into
its own exercises, especially how the much smaller Ukrainian
forces have been able to fend off the larger Russian military.
Tung said those would again feature this year, along with the
lessons learned from the war in Gaza.
For both of those conflicts, Tung said officials were looking at
the use of psychological warfare and asymmetric operations in
particular, though without explaining exactly how they would
figure in the drills.
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has championed the idea of
"asymmetric warfare", to make its forces, also much smaller than
China's more mobile and hard to attack, with for example
vehicle-mounted missiles and drones.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
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