The commencement yesterday of the live-fire component of the annual Han Kuang military exercises, Taiwan’s major war games involving all military branches, focused on testing the military’s preservation and maintenance of combat capabilities in the event of a full-scale Chinese invasion.
The 39th edition of the annual event officially began at 6am after the Ministry of National Defense’s Joint Operations Command Center, also known as the Hengshan Command Center, announced the initiation of the five-day live-fire drills to test the military’s capability to fend off a Chinese invasion.
As part of the drills, air force fighter jets that were originally deployed in the western part of Taiwan were dispatched to Hualien Air Base in the east early yesterday in a simulation of an invasion, the ministry said.
Photo: Yu Tai-lang, Taipei Times
This was done to make sure the main backbones of the nation’s fighter jets on the west side of Taiwan that is closer to the Chinese mainland would be able to preserve their combat readiness on the eastern part of the nation, it said.
All of the nation’s major naval vessels left their home ports early yesterday and sailed to designated locations off the coast in preparation for confronting enemy forces and to deploy naval mines to slow down an enemy invasion, the ministry said.
Reservists were simultaneously called up by the military and asked to report to designated locations as a preventive measure in anticipation of an enemy invasion, it added.
Photo: CNA
The annual exercises, which have served as Taiwan’s major war games since 1984, consist of live-fire drills and computerized war games, and are meant to test the nation’s combat readiness in the face of a possible Chinese invasion.
This year’s tabletop exercises were staged in May.
The five-day live-fire exercises are to run until Friday.
With Typhoon Doksuri approaching, the military yesterday announced that it had canceled an emergency takeoff and landing drill at the civilian Taitung Fengnian Airport planned for today.
The planned drill at Fengnian, the first of its kind since the airport opened in 1981, would have involved F-16 jets and C-130H Hercules transport aircraft, the ministry said.
The ministry has scheduled an anti-takeover drill for tomorrow at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, the country’s primary international gateway.
Should the drill in Taoyuan go ahead as planned, it would be the first time such an exercise would have been held at the nation’s busiest civilian airport.
Military spokesman Major General Sun Li-fang (孫立方) hinted that the ministry could cancel other parts of the Han Kuang exercises due to Typhoon Doksuri, with Taiwan expected to feel its impact tomorrow and on Thursday, the Central Weather Bureau said.
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most