DEFENSE/Han Kuang: Army choppers practice hot-pit refueling in New Taipei, Taichung

New Taipei, July 17 (CNA) Taiwan's Army on Thursday conducted hot-pit refueling and rearming drills for military helicopters in New Taipei and Taichung to test their quicker redeployment capabilities as part of the 9th day of the ongoing Han Kuang series of exercises.

The drills, featuring two UH-60M Black Hawks and two AH-64E Apache helicopters listed under the Army 601 Aviation Brigade on Thursday morning, saw the four choppers flying along the Dahan River before stopping at a riverside park in New Taipei's Shulin District.

According to the Ministry of National Defense (MND), such a drill involves simultaneously refueling and rearming a military aircraft/helicopter with new munitions while the engines are still running.

This kind of practice is used to minimize ground time, allowing military aircraft to quickly return to the air during combat operations.

The primary advantage is to significantly reduce the time an aircraft spends on the ground for refueling and rearming, enabling quicker redeployment.

MND said such a practice requires a military aircraft to complete hot-pit refueling and rearming within 30 minutes. Thursday morning's drill was completed in around 20 minutes.

Chieh Chung (揭仲), a researcher at the Association of Strategic Foresight, a Taipei-based think tank, told CNA that Thursday's drill was intended to simulate the Taoyuan-based Army 601 Aviation Brigade being attacked by invading People's Liberation Army (PLA) forces.

Given that their base was under attack, these Army choppers had to turn to other locations for emergency refueling and rearming to maintain their combat readiness, Chieh said.

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A similar hot-pit refueling and rearming drill was conducted in central Taichung City, featuring the Army's AH-1W Super Cobra attack helicopters.

Thursday marked the ninth and penultimate day of Taiwan's longest-ever live-fire phase of the annual Han Kuang military exercises, which officially began on July 9.

According to the MND, the 10-day, nine-night Han Kuang exercises running through Friday are twice as long as previous live-fire drills, which typically lasted five days and four nights.

Since 1984, the annual Han Kuang exercises have served as Taiwan's major war games, combining live-fire drills and computerized tabletop simulations to test combat readiness against a possible Chinese invasion.

This year's tabletop war games were conducted from April 5 to 18.