The Han Kuang exercises, the nation’s major war games, are to start today and run for five days.
The drills are to include a military aircraft emergency takeoff and landing exercise on a regular roadway on Wednesday, featuring all three fighter jet models in Taiwan’s fleet, a military source said last week.
The drill is to begin at 6:30am on a 3km section of Provincial Highway No. 1 in Pingtung County’s Jiadong Township (佳冬), and feature an Indigenous Defense Fighter, an F-16V, a Mirage 2000-5 and an E-2K Hawkeye early warning aircraft, the source said.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
The emergency landing and takeoff drill aims to test each aircraft’s ability to land on the roadway in case the airstrip at the nearby Pingtung Air Base is seriously damaged by enemy forces, the source said.
It would be the first time that such a drill is held on a smaller roadway featuring stoplights and intersections.
Previously, emergency landing exercises have been held on sections of the Sun Yat-sen Freeway (Freeway No. 1) in Tainan’s Madou (麻豆) and Rende (仁德) districts, as well as Changhua County’s Huatan Township (花壇) and Chiayi County’s Minsyong Township (民雄).
The Han Kuang exercises have been held annually since 1984, including live-fire drills and computerized war games, to test Taiwan’s combat readiness in the event of a Chinese invasion.
Tabletop drills for this year’s exercises were held from April 23 to 30.
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