The postponed live-fire component of this year’s Han Kuang military exercises is scheduled to take place in September and is to feature fighter jets conducting emergency takeoffs and landings on public highways, a military source said yesterday.
The Han Kuang exercises, the nation’s major war games, have been held annually since 1984 in the form of live-fire drills and computerized war games to test the nation’s combat readiness in the event of a Chinese invasion.
This year’s tabletop drills were held from April 23 to 30. The live-fire exercises were scheduled to start on July 12 and run for five days. However, due to a domestic COVID-19 outbreak that started in the middle of May, the military in June decided to postpone the live-fire part of the drill.
A military source yesterday said that the Ministry of National Defense has set the provisional date for the live-fire drills from Sept. 13 to 17.
The scale of the drills, whether they would be open to the media and the focus of the exercises is to be decided at a later date, depending on the pandemic situation at that time, the source added.
One element that would go ahead is a series of emergency takeoffs and landings of fighter jets on the Jiadong section of Provincial Highway No. 1 in Pingtung County, the source said.
It would be the first time such a drill would be conducted on the Jiadong section, one of five sections built in Taiwan to accommodate emergency military jet landings and takeoffs in the event of a war.
The drill would simulate a scenario in which Taiwan’s military and civilian airports and airstrips are seriously damaged by enemy fire, and jets have to land on the highway.
The other emergency landing strips are on Sun Yat-sen Freeway (Freeway No. 1) — the Madou (麻豆) and Rende (仁德) sections in Tainan, Huatan (花壇) section in Changhua County and Minsyong section (民雄) in Chiayi County.
Exercises have previously been conducted on these four sections, while drills planned for the Jiadong section in 2011 were canceled due to poor weather conditions.
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