Taiwan Plans 'Immediate Response' Drill to Counter China
The drill will be comprehensive, with troops dispatched to their assigned defensive positions accordingly, say sources.
Taiwan's armed forces will hold an unprecedented "immediate response" military drill involving all military branches next week in response to China's gray zone warfare, a military source has said.
Channel New Asia reports, speaking on condition of anonymity, the source said the new round of exercises will begin on March 17 and will last for five days.
The drill will be "comprehensive", with troops dispatched to their assigned defensive positions accordingly, the source said, without elaborating.
Last week, Taiwan's Defense Minister Wellington Koo said the Taiwan military was planning an "immediate response" drill in a fitting response to rampant "gray zone" harassments and threats posed by the Chinese military, but did not say when it would be held.
Among the recent gray zone activities Koo was referring to were recent reports of submarine cables in the Taiwan Strait being severed by ships sailing under flags of convenience with links to China over the past few months.
In February, a Togolese-registered vessel and its Chinese crew were detained on suspicion of severing a cable between the island of Taiwan and the outlying Penghu County. Gray zone activities refer to actions that involve ambiguous or nontraditional methods that aim to achieve strategic objectives without overtly crossing the threshold into open conflict.
A source told local media that the so-called "immediate response" drill is aimed at better familiarising troops with their strategic defensive positions and getting them ready to respond swiftly should China build up gray zone activities into an actual military attack.
According to Taipei Times, for 40 years, the annual Han Kuang exercises have tested the military’s combat readiness in the face of a possible Chinese invasion. Such drills usually feature large-scale live-fire demonstrations, with the President and top generals watching over the highly-publicised missile launches and anti-amphibious landing exercises.
