Taiwan’s largest annual military drills, the Han Kuang exercises, are underway. This year, the focus is on unscripted combat scenarios.
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00:00Now, this year is the 40th edition of the Hanguang exercises.
00:04It's Taiwan's largest military drills that have been carried out since 1984.
00:08And the goal is to simulate how to defend against an all-out invasion from China.
00:13Now, this year we're going to see a couple of key components from the military drills.
00:17On the first couple of days, we're going to see dozens of Taiwan's military aircraft fly
00:22from the west coast, that side that's closer to China.
00:26These bases here, those aircraft are going to be repositioning and flying and basing
00:31in the east coast of the island.
00:32And they're doing that to get away from the front line and to provide better protection
00:36because Taiwan doesn't have as many military aircraft as China does.
00:41Now, further in the week, we're going to see live fire exercises on the outlying islands
00:46of Taiwan only.
00:48That's Penghu, Matsu, and Jinmen.
00:50The MND says that this year they will not be conducting any live fire drills on the
00:54main island for safety concerns.
00:57Further in the week, we're also going to see a lot of airport defense drills.
01:00Now, Taiwan has several airports along the west coast and major cities, but the largest
01:05airport, Taoyuan International Airport, will close and suspend flights for about an hour
01:10on the 25th to allow the military to practice how to defend against an attack as the enemy
01:17would need these ports to provide more troops for that invasion.
01:21But the big thing about Hong Kong this year is all about decentralization as these drills
01:27for the first time are unscripted.
01:29Now, for more on what that means, I spoke to Alessio Patilano.
01:33He's a war studies professor at the King's College in London.
01:36Now, Hong Kong historically has always been first and foremost about domestic reassurance
01:42and cross-strait signaling.
01:45It was about communicating to both audiences in Taiwan and, if you want, observers in China
01:58how seriously defense of Taiwan was taken by Taiwanese authorities.
02:04The interesting thing about it this year is that the emphasis that the new minister has
02:11put on this idea of exercising and testing, decentralize the command and control function
02:19and therefore the resilience of the military.
02:22Why?
02:23Because exercising and training under conditions in which different units in a theater may
02:28or may not be able to remain in close contact with the headquarters is absolutely essential.
02:37In a context in which we know, if ever there were to be high intensity crisis scenarios
02:44or indeed kinetic occurrences across the straits, the survivability of different units will
02:51be absolutely central to the Taiwanese capacity to respond effectively.
02:57Now, Alessio, in talking about this decentralization idea and the fact that these drills are unscripted,
03:03is that a step towards more realistic combat training for Taiwan?
03:07It definitely is.
03:09This is definitely what you would expect it to be and, in particular, this is where,
03:13for example, if you see in sort of complex exercises in the NATO or NATO members kind
03:20of context, that has become now a routine.
03:25A real world sort of combat experience, for as much as it can be replicated, relies heavily
03:33on adaptation and the capacity to adjust to conditions that sometimes you cannot foresee.
03:41So training for the unexpected, thinking on your feet, be quick about it.
03:47These are really important elements of any realistic and viable type of training these days.