Taiwan ends 14-day Han Kuang drills

Taiwan ended the computer-simulated phase of its 2026 Han Kuang military exercises on Friday after 14 days of round-the-clock war games. (taipeitimes.com) The Ministry of National Defense said the tabletop drills were designed to sharpen commanders’ decisions under high stress and to test whether units could keep operating during a fast-moving attack. Defense Minister Wellington Koo said the scenarios drew on recent wars and hybrid threats. (taipeitimes.com) Koo said the exercise began with simulated “gray zone” pressure and escalated into high-intensity conflict. Taiwan also dispersed administrative, armament and command units to separate locations so backup systems could take over after coordinated strikes. (taipeitimes.com) This year’s Han Kuang drill is Taiwan’s 42nd, and officials said the tabletop phase ran from April 11 to April 24. A senior defense official told Focus Taiwan the exercise added four U.S.-style rehearsal methods, including combined-arms rehearsals and backbriefs. (focustaiwan.tw) The same official said Taiwan’s military intelligence units were included in the tabletop games for the first time. Analyst Su Tzu-yun told CNA-affiliated Focus Taiwan that the change should improve battlefield awareness by combining intelligence with radar and reconnaissance data. (focustaiwan.tw) The April simulation is only the first half of the exercise. Taiwan’s armed forces have scheduled the live-fire phase for August 5 through August 14, extending the field drills to 10 days after last year’s record expansion. (cna.com.tw) (taipeitimes.com) Officials are also tying Han Kuang more closely to civil-defense planning. National Security Council Deputy Secretary-General Lin Fei-fan said in March that 11 cities and counties would join resilience drills from April through August, with Kaohsiung, Pingtung, New Taipei and Yilan taking part in cross-region coordination during the August live-fire phase. (cna.com.tw) The end of the drill also landed in the middle of a political fight over satellite communications. Taiwan lawmakers and regulators spent the past week debating whether Starlink should be allowed into the market and whether emergency communications can rely on a foreign-owned network. (cna.com.tw) (taipeitimes.com) Digital Affairs Minister Lin Yi-jin said SpaceX told Taiwan that the island’s high 4G and 5G coverage made the market less attractive. Legislators from both major parties said any satellite deal would need protections on emergency bandwidth, local control and security oversight. (cna.com.tw) (taipeitimes.com) Those concerns are not theoretical. Reuters reported this month that a Starlink outage last year disrupted a U.S. Navy test of unmanned surface vessels off California for almost an hour, exposing what officials described as a single point of failure. (staradvertiser.com) Koo said problems found in the April war games will be logged and fixed before future readiness training and wartime deployment planning. The next public test comes in August, when Taiwan moves from screens and simulations to troops, roads and live fire. (taipeitimes.com)