Taiwan isn't saying much about its war plans for a China fight

A Taiwanese soldier stands guard on the street after a drill at the Songshan Airport. Daniel Ceng/Anadolu via Getty Images

Taiwan held 10 days of military drills as part of its annual Han Kuang exercise.

Officials revealed little about the tactics or lessons in the sprawling, unscripted practice events.

But the sequence of the drills offered clues as to how Taiwan expects a war with China to unfold.

TAIPEI — Gunshots rang out at midnight as Taiwanese infantry, hidden on rooftops and in alleyways, opened fire with blanks along the streets of northern Taipei. They weren't fighting for the beaches; instead, they were defending a six-lane road, split down the middle by elevated metro tracks, leading to Songshan Airport, the capital's closest airfield.

By the sixth night of Taiwan's annual Han Kuang exercise , the simulated fighting had moved inland, including into the heart of Taipei. That progression offered a revealing glimpse at how Taiwan is preparing for war with China.

Taiwan's defense ministry stayed relatively quiet about operational details during the 10 days of military drills, and the 40 or so journalists and observers at the Songshan drill, for example, couldn't reach a clear consensus about where the simulated enemy was coming from.

Authorities provided little on-the-record detail about the specific capabilities they hoped to test or the lessons they aimed to draw from this year's Han Kuang exercise, but the nature of the drills, the sequence of events, and their locations offered clues about how Taiwan suspects mainland China might attack and how the island intends to fight back.

Taiwanese forces advance across a street near Songshan Airport. Daniel Ceng/Anadolu via Getty Images

The picture was incomplete. The Han Kuang exercise involved numerous drills across the island, some undisclosed until after they happened. When reporters were given advanced notice about where a drill was taking place, they weren't told until the night before.

Taiwan's defense ministry did not respond to queries about the planning or objectives of the drills.

A pivot to asymmetric warfare

Still, some themes were obvious, including an emphasis on ambush tactics and dispersed operations. Taiwanese forces drilled using barricades and narrow streets to set up kill boxes at urban intersections, firing on enemy forces from multiple directions.

Other exercises tested backup plans for units suffering heavy casualties. One drill saw military police infantry, responsible for guarding Taiwan's leadership, take the Taipei subway to regroup and set up a temporary headquarters at the island's largest trade show center.

Taiwanese military police took the subway during a late-night drill in Taipei. Daniel Ceng/Anadolu via Getty Images

Heavily outmanned and outgunned by China, Taiwan has been pivoting toward what it calls the "porcupine strategy." Instead of seeking to match China force-for-force, the island plans to rely on asymmetric warfare to make itself prohbitively costly for Beijing to capture.

Taiwan's 108 M1A2T Abrams tanks , for example, could be used in ambushes on roads and highways against the more numerous, lighter-armored vehicles China could send across the strait. One drill saw a platoon of Abrams hiding in a construction yard near the main international airport, where they practiced refueling next to a temple.

A Taiwanese soldier stands guard in front of a Clouded Leopard infantry fighting vehicle. An Abrams tank covered in tarp and scrap is pictured right. Matthew Loh for Business Insider

Lin Ping-yu, a former Taiwanese special forces paratrooper who is now a New Taipei City councilor, said the Han Kuang has recently shifted from a staged format to "genuine operational verification" for individual brigades and units.

"This is a critical transition for enhancing Taiwan's warfighting capabilities," Lin told Business Insider.

Past Han Kuangs featured scripted scenarios, such as a large beach landing in 2023, in which some Taiwanese troops played People's Liberation Army amphibious attackers . More recent versions of the exercise, though, have been focused on small skirmishes across its cities.

"From a capability standpoint, having small units operate in a more decentralized and independent way is exactly the kind of thing Taiwan's military has been emphasizing in its asymmetric force development in recent years," said Tristan Tang, a Taiwan-based nonresident fellow with the National Bureau of Asian Research, a US think tank.

Tang said Taiwan appears to be preparing for a wide range of contingencies, from counterattacks on beaches and airfield defense to naval escort drills focused on breaking blockades.

Taiwan has said it aims to make the Han Kuang more realistic, repeatedly stressing the drills would be "unscripted," an approach common in Western militaries.

Taiwanese soldiers practice conducting first aid for wounded troops during an exercise. An Rong Xu/Bloomberg via Getty Images

To that end, Taiwanese junior commanders were tasked with giving "back briefs," or relaying their own interpretation of orders to superiors to make it clear they understood their mission. The practice, rooted in US military doctrine, debuted at the Han Kuang this year.

Tang, who designs a high-profile war game centered on a PLA attack on Taiwan, said such practices are vital to a viable defense.

"In a cross-strait conflict, the PLA would likely use large numbers of ballistic and cruise missiles, along with long-range rocket fires, in the opening phase," he said.

Such attacks could disrupt Taiwan's communications and command-and-control structure, Tang said, forcing individual units to continue operating and carrying out their missions while cut off from senior leadership.

Taiwanese soldiers carry fuel supplies towards AH-64E Apache Guardian and UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters during a refueling drill as part of the annual Han Kuang military exercise. I-Hwa Cheng / AFP via Getty Ima...

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