The Republic of China’s military doesn’t seem to relax for very long between military exercises these days. Maybe that’s because Beijing never stops threatening the island. But the ROC is also taking the drills more seriously than it used to.
The military has just begun a five-day “joint defense exercise featuring Marine Corps units mobilizing to reinforce the Taipei metropolitan area” (Taipei Times, July 14, 2026).
This exercise
simulates scenarios including the detection of hostile vessels entering Taiwan’s territorial waters, focusing on integrating the capabilities of the separate military branches and improving joint operations, testing decentralized command structures, and command-and-control mechanisms….
The exercise is designed to test whether operation commands can maintain independent operations while using distributed and decentralized command mechanisms, said Su Tzu-yun, a research fellow at the government-funded Institute for National Defense and Security Research.
It requires a higher level of engagement than regular combat readiness drills conducted separately by individual services because it is cross-service, although it is less expansive than the annual Han Kuang exercise, he said….
The goal is to build a defense line for the greater Taipei area through cross-regional reinforcements to enable the forces to respond to and attack rapidly shifting threats.
In 2026, the ROC military has conducted or will conduct some seven major named exercises, sometimes in cooperation with local governments to test things like disaster response and ability to evacuate; as well as many smaller drills.
This year’s military exercises continue a trend. Before 2016, the ROC’s exercises were often regarded as perfunctory. The pace started to pick up toward the end of the last decade; and after 2022, they became markedly more frequent and ambitious.
Also see:
Global Taiwan: “Taiwan’s Military Shows New Areas of Focus in a More Ambitious 2025 Han Kuang Exercise”
“Building upon a trend first noted in the 2022 iteration of Han Kuang, the 2025 Han Kuang was also noteworthy for the largest number of reservists (22,000) ever called up for training. This represents an effort to address the severe weaknesses of Taiwan’s reserve system—which possesses a large number of potential troops on paper, although those reserve soldiers receive little in the way of meaningful training.”
