Taipei: Taiwan’s increased focus on gray zone threats and its extension of the annual Han Kuang military drills’ live-fire portion to 10 days have been praised by two American defense experts. “Taiwan is on the right track to contribute to deterrence and should continue apace with heightened urgency and resources,” Ely Ratner, a former assistant secretary for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs at the Pentagon, told CNA.
According to Focus Taiwan, Ratner, now a senior advisor to the Washington-based consulting firm Clarion Strategies, said the changes to the annual large-scale Han Kuang exercises “reflect an important ongoing evolution in the strengthening of Taiwan’s defenses and resilience.” Meanwhile, John Dotson, director of the Washington-based Global Taiwan Institute, said that the changes meant this year’s exercises would be “less scripted,” allowing for “a bit more spontaneity, and the confusion that comes with actual warfare.”
Dotson highlighted that in previous years, the Han Kuang exercises had been “a performance” that was “highly scripted, and more of a public relations project than a meaningful military exercise.” Now, it seems that Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense (MND) is willing to take “positive steps” in the “right direction,” he explained in an email to CNA. “Learning to adapt to disruption and chaos is a valuable training benefit of less scripted exercises,” Dotson added.
The MND announced on Tuesday that the live-fire portion of this year’s Han Kuang military exercises would be extended to 10 days, twice as long as previous drills, with an added focus on China’s “gray zone” tactics-coercive actions that fall short of open conflict. According to Major General Tung Chi-hsing, director of the MND joint operations planning division, the scenario begins with gray zone harassment from the Chinese military and transitions through phases such as peace-to-war shift, force deployment, joint anti-landing operations, coastal and beachhead combat, in-depth defense, and protracted warfare.
The annual Han Kuang exercises, which have been Taiwan’s major war games since 1984, consist of live-fire drills and computerized tabletop war games. The drills aim to test Taiwan’s combat readiness in the face of a possible Chinese invasion. This year’s tabletop war games were conducted from April 5-18.