Taipei, July 24 (CNA) The live-fire component of the annual Han Kuang military exercises, Taiwan’s major war games involving all military branches, kicked off early Monday with the focus of the first day’s drills on testing the military’s preservation and maintenance of combat capabilities in the event of a full-scale Chinese invasion.
The 39th edition of the annual event officially began at 6 a.m. after the Ministry of National Defense’s (MND) Joint Operations Command Center, also known as the Hengshan Command Center, announced the initiation of the five-day live-fire drills to test the Taiwanese military’s capability to fend off a Chinese invasion.
As part of the drills, Air Force fighter jets that were originally deployed in the western part of Taiwan were dispatched to Hualien Air Base in the east early Monday in a simulation of an invasion, according to the MND.
This was done to make sure the main backbones of the nation’s fighter jets in the west side of the island that is closer to the Chinese mainland will be able to preserve their combat readiness in the eastern part of Taiwan, it said.
Meanwhile, all of the nation’s major naval vessels left their home ports early Monday and sailed to designated locations off the coast in preparation for confronting enemy forces and to deploy naval mines to slow down enemy invasion, the MND said.
Also, Taiwanese reservists have been simultaneously called up by the military and asked to report to designated locations as a preventive measure in anticipation of enemy invasion of the island, it added.
The annual Han Kuang exercises, which have served as Taiwan’s major war games since 1984, consist of live-fire drills and computerized war games and are meant to test Taiwan’s combat readiness in the face of a possible Chinese invasion.
This year’s tabletop exercises were staged in May.
The five-day island-wide live-fire exercises portion, meanwhile, is scheduled from Monday through Friday.
Earlier this year, Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong had been detected conducting drills in the West Pacific at seas off eastern Taiwan, raising concerns that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is now capable of launching attacks directly at the eastern part of Taiwan that used to be a safe haven for Taiwanese military forces during an Chinese invasion.
Some observers, therefore, questioned if it is still feasible to conduct drills during Han Kuang to simulate moving military assets from the west to east as the military has done on Monday.
Two military experts CNA talked to, namely, Lin Ying-yu (???), an assistant professor at Tamkang University’s Institute of Strategic Studies, and Chieh Chung (??), an associate research fellow with the National Policy Foundation in Taipei, however, both said it is still of primary importance to test the military’s redeployment capabilities during Han Kuang.
In the event of a Chinese invasion, local warships and warplanes are still facing much greater direct threat if they are deployed in the west side of Taiwan than moving to the east, given the fact that PLA currently still does not have enough long-range precision strike capability targeting eastern Taiwan, according to both Lin and Chieh.