DEFENSE/Taiwan to lengthen 2025 Han Kuang drills to boost training: Minister

Taipei, March 4 (CNA) Both the computer-aided wargames and the combat training drills of this year's Han Kuang military exercises will be extended to bolster the military's ability to conduct joint combat operations, Defense Minister Wellington Koo (顧立雄) has said.

The focus in 2025 of Taiwan's largest-scale annual military exercises will be responses to "gray zone" activities -- provocative or aggressive actions that fall just short of armed conflict -- and improving defense resiliency, Koo said at a press event Monday.

The emphasis is not surprising given recent allegations of commercial Chinese vessels cutting undersea communication cables in Taiwan's vicinity and China's holding of air and naval exercises in nearby waters and in the Tasman Sea without advance notice.

To make the planned drills more effective, the computer-aided wargames will be extended to 14 days, from the eight days they lasted in the past, and the combat exercises will be extended to 10 days, from the previous five, Koo said.

According to Koo, this year's combat exercises will include five new elements: joint information and electronic warfare, rapid switching to wartime deployments, comprehensive air and missile defense, joint maritime defense, and joint ground defense exercises.

Precision missile strikes, live-fire shooting tests and evaluations of the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, and simulated confrontations between Army Combined Arms Brigades, will also again be held this year, he said.

Asked whether drones and unmanned surface vessels will be part of this year's exercises, Koo said the military "will showcase (its) drone capabilities," but not its unmanned ships, as it has not yet developed sufficient combat capabilities with unmanned ships.

Lien Chih-wei (連志威), deputy chief of general staff for operations and planning, said several goals of last year's Han Kuang exercises, including the testing of newly acquired weapons systems, will be included in both the computer-aided and combat drills.

As drones were commissioned into the Armed Forces not long ago, an appropriate number of them will be tested during the drills based on the current size of the country's drone fleet, Lien said.

Asked whether the M1A2T Abrams tanks and high mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS) that the military received from the United States in late 2024 will be tested, Koo said they are scheduled to be commissioned later this year and "not likely to make it" for the Han Kuang drills.

Meanwhile, Lee Ting-chung (李定中), who heads the All-Out Defense Mobilization Agency, said a brigade of reservists will be mobilized during the exercises to help active-duty troops in a simulation of the People's Liberation Army turning a training drill near Taiwan into a surprise attack.

The reservists will swiftly assemble into a fighting force and take part in a resources mobilization drill to practice carrying out requisition and acquisition orders from command centers and repurpose production lines to meet wartime needs, Lee said.