DEFENSE/Lai inspects 1st Han Kuang exercises as president

Taipei, July 23 (CNA) President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) made his first inspection of Taiwan's annual Han Kuang exercises as the nation's commander-in-chief on Tuesday.

Arriving at Hualien Air Base in eastern Taiwan on a presidential aircraft around 10:30 a.m., Lai, who was inaugurated in May, changed from a suit into an Army uniform before beginning his inspection.

Accompanied by Defense Minister Wellington Koo (顧立雄) and other senior military officials, Lai stopped at an area of the base where a group of medics were simulating treating patients in a field hospital.

The drill observed by the president, himself a former physician, is meant to test medics' familiarity with the so-called "Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC)," a set of guidelines for trauma life support in prehospital combat medicine published by the United States Defense Health Agency.

Lai then gifted red envelopes containing money to participating troops before leaving without making a public address.

Earlier Tuesday, troops from the Hualien Air Base-based 5th Tactical Mixed Wing ran a round of exercises simulating turning the base's taxiway into an emergency runway within 30 minutes.

The drill simulated a scenario where enemy missiles had rendered the base's main runway unusable.

Airmen first used a bird dispersal vehicle and a separate vehicle to detect foreign objects near the runway to ensure arriving aircraft would not be damaged by bird strikes or foreign objects.

They also installed signs along the emergency runway at 1,000-foot (305-meter) intervals to show pilots the distance remaining to the end of the runway.

An arresting gear system was also used to bring jets landing on the temporary runway to a halt.

Land-based arresting gear systems are usually used for landing aircraft on short or temporary runways, for emergencies involving brake failure or steering problems or when sections of a runway are out of commission.

Due to incoming Typhoon Gaemi, the military canceled a round of fighter jets emergency landing and refueling drills at the emergency runway on Tuesday.

Military spokesman Sun Li-fang (孫立方) told reporters that the ongoing live-fire component of the Han Kuang series of exercises made adjustments for weather for safety reasons.

Sun, however, did not disclose if more scheduled drills of Han Kuang would be canceled in the following days.

Typhoon Gaemi could make landfall in Taiwan's northeastern county of Yilan early Thursday, according to the Central Weather Administration.

The 40th edition of the annual event officially began at 6 a.m. on Monday after the Ministry of National Defense's Joint Operations Command Center, also known as the Hengshan Command Center, announced the beginning of the five-day around-the-clock drills.

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 seek to test Taiwan's combat readiness in the face of a possible Chinese invasion.

This year's tabletop exercises were staged in April.