Resilience key in Han Kuang drills as China ramps up military pressure: Analysts
ROC Central News Agency
07/28/2023 10:17 AM
By Sean Lin, CNA staff reporter
This year's Han Kuang military exercises included three brand new components which experts said is a reflection of the Taiwan military's goal to build up its resistance against a potential Chinese invasion and to counter China's increasingly aggressive military maneuvers that aim to ramp up the pressure on Taiwan and test the country to its limits.
Taoyuan drill
For the first time in the 39 years of the annual Han Kuang drills, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) carried out a live-fire anti-takeover drill at the Taoyuan International Airport, Taiwan's busiest civilian airport. The 40-minute drill simulated a takeover of the airport by an invasion force in choppers. Troops defended the airport and sought to fend off the invaders with ground fire. No civilian aircraft were allowed to take off from or land at the airport during the drill.
Taoyuan airport occupies a critical strategic location as it is less than five kilometers from Zhuwei beach and just 19 km from Taipei Port, Chieh Chung (揭仲), an associate research fellow with the National Policy Foundation in Taipei, said.
Taipei Port is located near a stretch of beach in Bali, New Taipei, which the MND deems vulnerable to amphibious landing operations by the People's Liberation Army (PLA). The capture of this strategic location could lead to China swiftly taking Taipei, Taiwan's capital and economic hub, in the event of a military invasion.
Should the airport fall under PLA control, troops and supplies could then easily be flown in from the Chinese mainland on transport aircraft and choppers, which would give the PLA a significant advantage during an attack on Taipei, Chieh said.
Additionally, due to the airport's proximity to some key strategic locations, controlling it would enable the PLA to gain an advantage over Taiwan's troops, Chieh added.
For example, Chieh said, the Linkou Plateau located about 5 kilometers east of the airport would give the PLA access to high ground and allow it to cut off any reinforcements sent up north through Taoyuan and Hsinchu from Taiwan's southern military bases.
More alarmingly, Chieh said, with China's Type 075 landing helicopter dock -- a massive amphibious assault ship measuring 237m in length -- having entered service in 2021, PLA choppers could now take off while transiting the strait and directly fly past the beaches on Taiwan's west coast to Taoyuan airport, allowing them to launch an attack after bypassing Taiwan's coastal line of defense, Chieh said.
Although Wednesday's drill at the airport, which, according to local media reports was cut from four hours to under one -- due to opposition from flight operators -- and therefore on a smaller scale than the MND originally planned, it was still significant as it marked the first-ever anti-takeover exercises at the country's main international gateway, the lack of which up until now had posed a security loophole.
Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲), a researcher at a government think tank, agreed that Wednesday's anti-aircraft landing drill aimed to test the military's ability to prevent the PLA launching an attack from behind Taiwan's coastal defense line.
Crucially, Su said, the drill would help prevent the PLA from flanking Taiwan's troops by simultaneously attacking from the airport and from the "red beaches" -- those between Bali and Nanliao Fishing Harbor which are deemed ideal points for enemy landing.
The drill, Su said, was likely inspired by the Battle of Antonov Airport in the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia, which saw Ukrainian forces, acting on intelligence about an imminent assault on the airport, repel the initial attack by advancing on Russian troops, which prevented the invading force from rapidly taking Kyiv.
Risk from the east
Also for the first time, four F-16V fighter jets and a C-130 transport aircraft landed at the civilian Taitung Airport (also known as Fengnian Airport) during the July 18 rehearsal for the drill scheduled for July 24, with the F-16Vs taking off after being refueled and loaded with AIM-9M "Sidewinder" missiles.
Although this drill was later canceled due to the approaching Typhoon Doksuri, the rehearsal was significant nonetheless as it closely mirrored the exercise, Chieh said.
The drill was designed to simulate situations where runways at the Chiashan Air Force Base -- an aircraft cavern in Hualien built to protect military aircraft from being destroyed by ballistic missiles during war -- and the underground Shihtzushan Air Force Base in Taitung are destroyed by the enemy, Chieh said.
In the past, Taiwan was not so concerned about runways at Chiashan and Shihtzushan being hit by Chinese missiles because the angles they are built at would make it difficult for attackers to strike from the west, Chieh said.
However, Chieh said, over the past few months the PLA successfully tested a new maneuver that saw its bombers or fighter jets -- commanded by airborne early warning and control aircraft and sometimes accompanied by electronic warfare aircraft -- flying over the Miyako Strait before approaching Taiwan's east or southeast coast.
This indicates PLA warplanes would now be able to strike the two eastern Air Force bases with ballistic missiles launched from bombers or warships, which could paralyze the bases and thereby prevent Taiwan's aircraft from landing or taking off, Chieh said.
In light of this scenario, the military has made it a priority to establish potential areas that could be used as runways during war, Chieh said.
One such "wartime runway" would likely include a 3 km stretch of the Guanshan Cycling Trail in Taitung, where a planned road expansion has been passed, subject to conditions, by the Environmental Protection Administration, Chieh added.
Maintaining control
Additionally, a drill named Project Tien Tiao ("Sky Ferret" in Chinese), conducted in the early hours of July 24, tested the Air Force's readiness in relocating and transferring the chain of command from a compromised Air Combat Command on Toad Mountain in Taipei's Gongguan to backup command centers around the nation.
The exercise consisted of three parts: the transfer of command from the Air Combat Command to a classified location in northern Taiwan, from that classified location in the north to another in the east, and from that classified location in the east to another in the south, several sources with knowledge of the matter told CNA.
"The Air Combat Command is often likened to the nervous system. If the nervous system is paralyzed, it does not matter how strong your arms or legs are," Chieh said.
Therefore, Chieh said, the armed forces must be able to maintain the chain of command when its main command centers, the Air Combat Command and the Joint Operations Command Center, are compromised, to ensure that they are able to sustain fighting capacity.
These "decentralization" efforts would boost the resilience of command centers and have been high on the MND's priority list over the past five years, Su said.
Comparing command headquarters with "switchboards" and backup centers with "extensions," Su said, "It used to be that if the switchboard was down, all the extensions were down. But now, if the switchboard is down, all the extensions are still able to communicate with one another and form a network."
Su added that the total number of command centers, backup command centers and makeshift centers -- including the one located in a branch of the Hsuehshan Tunnel that was revealed by local media in 2022 -- around the country is "in the double digits."
Female reservists debut
Another noteworthy precedent set during this year's Han Kuang drills was the participation of female reservists.
On July 24, the first day of the five-day drills, 19 female reservists made headlines for volunteering in a concurrent refresher program held by the Taoyuan City Reserve Command. The first refresher program that allowed women to participate was held in May.
While past exercises saw the participation of female military personnel in active service, this was the first time female reservists were involved.
A reservist surnamed Chen (陳), who was discharged three years ago and now works in the electronics industry, told local media that she signed up for the refresher program after hearing about it from a friend.
Chen, who served as a driver in the military, said she hoped to relive her time in the armed forces, during which she once participated in the Han Kuang drills.
Through the stringent training during the refresher, Chen said she hoped to gain hands-on experience applying her combat skills.
Taiwan is prepared
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.
Beijing claims Taiwan as an inalienable part of its territory that must be reunited, by force if necessary, even though the Chinese Communist Party has never ruled Taiwan or any of the islands it governs.
While it is not uncommon for foreign media outlets to describe the scenarios covered during the Han Kuang exercises in hyperbolic terms to play up the sense of crisis in Taiwan, such depictions are maybe a far cry from how people in Taiwan really feel about the prospect of an imminent Chinese invasion.
A poll published by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation in August 2022, a week after the PLA staged large-scale live-fire exercises around Taiwan in retaliation for a visit by then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the country, showed that an overwhelming 78 percent of respondents said they were "not afraid" of China's military exercises, while only 17 percent stated the opposite.
The poll was conducted by telephone and gathered 1,035 valid responses among residents in Taiwan over the age of 20 under a confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of 3.05 percent.
The poll results could be attributed to the fact that the PLA has been saber-rattling around Taiwan since 2016, through sailing its military vessels and flying warplanes close to the island nation. Nowadays, Chinese naval operations in waters around Taiwan and fly-bys of Chinese military aircraft happen on a daily basis.
With Taiwan's armed forces pressing on with the Han Kuang drills year after year for nearly four decades, "taking everything in its stride" is probably a more accurate description of how Taiwan deals with the threat on its doorstep.
This does not mean Taiwan takes the situation lightly.
Perhaps no one has summed up the importance of the annual exercises better than Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng (邱國正), when he delivered his remarks at the conclusion of this year's tabletop exercises in May.
"There are two types of people who are always testing the Defense Ministry's work: the people of Taiwan, for whom we train tirelessly to protect, and the enemies, for whom we train tirelessly to deter and defeat," Chiu said. "If we do our jobs well, the first type of people will continue smiling. If we fail in our duties, the second type of people will have their way."
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