This year’s Han Kuang military exercises will emphasize force preservation and homeland defense to stop the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) from crossing the Taiwan Strait, National Security Council Secretary-General Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said.
Koo made the remarks three days before the launch of the annual drills in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the sister paper of the Taipei Times) that was posted online yesterday.
A key objective of this year’s exercise is to test the armed forces’ ability to survive a surprise attack by China with enough assets remaining to conduct counterstrikes, Koo said, adding that various methods would be used to gauge their effectiveness.
Photo: Chen Yun, Taipei Times
Another crucial aim of the drills is to boost homeland defense operations, including air defense and maritime joint interdiction capabilities, he said.
“Should we achieve these goals, we would able to prevent [the PLA] from crossing the Taiwan Strait,” Koo said.
The air force’s ability to persevere against enemy attacks and retain sufficient assets to contest Chinese air superiority would be an important aspect of the nation’s defense, he said.
The field exercises include repelling attacks by simulated Chinese airborne forces as the PLA’s preferred mode of attack appears to be helicopter-based air assaults instead of amphibious landings, Koo said.
“Defending Taiwan would not be a purely military endeavor, but also involve making use of civilian personnel and materiel,” Koo said, adding that this capability would be tested in the drills.
Asked about the sharp fall in the number of countries that recognize the nation’s sovereignty, Koo said Taiwan’s security depends on the international community’s recognition of the nation’s importance to the common good, not the number of diplomatic allies.
Taipei’s stance that Taiwan and China should not be subordinate to one another has gained traction in the international community in large part due to the understanding that Taiwan’s welfare is important to the common good, he said.
Despite Beijing’s claims, the world has rejected the position that the cross-strait situation is an internal issue and has come to recognize that changing the “status quo” by force or intimidation is utterly unacceptable, Koo said.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat