Taiwan’s military has finalized its plan to extend the length of reservist training periods and training hours, starting next year, hoping to improve the combat readiness of the country’s reserve forces, a military official said Tuesday.

Reservists will undergo two weeks of training rather than the current five to seven days, and they can be asked to train two years in a row rather than every other year, said Ma Chia-lung (???), deputy head of the Ministry of National Defense’s All-out Defense Mobilization Office.

The military will also scale up reservist training by doubling the time spent on required combat training sessions, such as shooting rifles, to maintain basic combat skills, he said.

At present, for example, rifle training sessions for reservists last 12 hours, featuring 86 rounds of ammunition, but they will expand to 28 hours and 183 rounds of ammunition next year, Ma said.

The plan, to be implemented on a trial basis, was devised after the military said last year it wanted to ensure that Taiwan’s reserve force can more reliably back up regular forces in protecting the country amid increased Chinese military maneuvers around Taiwan.

Reservist training includes specialty retraining, firearms training, combat training, combined training, and disaster prevention and relief training, which are necessary for combat operations and disaster relief, the ministry said.

But while the training periods for reservists will be longer and more intense under the new guidelines, they will not result in much more reservist training over time compared to current practices.

At present, reservists undergo training every two years for five days (for former soldiers) or seven days (for officers) at a military base near their residence to maintain basic combat skills.

They are asked to report for training a maximum of four times in the eight years after they are discharged from active duty.

Under the new rules, reservists will only have to undergo training twice in the eight years after they are discharged, but the training sessions can be in consecutive years.

The new rules will be tested for the first three quarters of 2022 at 25 military camps around the country where around 15,000 reservists discharged from the military within the past eight years will be trained, according to Ma.

The military will conduct a review of the new rules in the fourth quarter of 2022 to see if they are generating the desired results before it decides whether to fully commit to the program, he said.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel