On Wednesday, the island’s military conducted an anti-takeover drill at Taoyuan International Airport in Taiwan for the first time ever in an effort to fend off any prospective attack from Beijing.
The exercise was designed to test the Taiwanese military’s capacity to cooperate across branches and handle problems during a made-up Chinese invasion, according to a previous statement from the Ministry of National Defence.
The exercise at Taiwan‘s busiest international entry point, which included soldiers on the runway and military helicopters in the sky, demonstrates how Taipei is preparing for a variety of contingencies in the face of concerns about China’s escalating military intimidation, which concerns have grown since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began last year.
Taiwan is a self-governing democracy that China’s ruling Communist Party claims as its territory despite never having had control of it. Taiwan has been the target of years of diplomatic isolation by China.
Beijing has not ruled out using force to annex Taiwan, and it has been applying increasing amounts of military pressure on Taipei by sending aircraft into its own self-declared air defence identification zone and by stationing warships in the waterways surrounding the island.
Airports are prime targets, as Moscow’s ultimately fruitless attempt to seize Kyiv’s Hostomel Airport during the initial phases of their invasion last year plainly shown.
Wearing red helmets to symbolise imaginary infiltrators, Taoyuan military personnel and airport police on Wednesday engaged in a gunfire practise. Additionally, firefighters practised extinguishing fictitious fires.
As they flew over the airport, military helicopters staged the deployment of enemy soldiers on the runway. As they moved closer to an airport facility, they engaged in gunfire with the Taiwanese soldiers guarding the location as well as those who were hiding under homemade covers.
The drills, which lasted 30 minutes, came to an end as the Taiwanese military practised routing any hostile forces that were still there and raising the Taiwan flag to indicate their imaginary successful defence of the airport.
The airport drill was recently included to the Han Kuang military exercise, which has been staged yearly since 1984 and involves all military branches in Taiwan, including the reserve forces, in an effort to improve overall defence capabilities.
Aircraft landing and taking off were momentarily barred during the exercise due to airspace management procedures, a Taoyuan International Airport spokeswoman told CNN.
The airport rescheduled eight flights, but there was “no major impact” on travellers, the official continued.
As Typhoon Doksuri made landfall in the northern Philippines on Wednesday, Taiwan’s military suspended some of its Han Kuang drills.
According to the island’s Central Weather Bureau, the storm’s outer bands are already having an effect on eastern Taiwan and are expected to continue moving towards the island and China over the next few days.
The Ministry of National Defence stated in a statement on Monday that Taiwan’s Air Force opted to cancel the drills at Taitung’s Fengnian airport on its eastern beaches on Tuesday owing to “safety concerns” as the storm neared.