The annual 10-day Han Kuang exercise will test Taiwan’s ability to respond to a Chinese attack on its command structure.

Taiwan has launched the largest-ever version of its annual war games exercises, role playing responses to a hypothetical attack by Beijing on its communications systems before an invasion of the island.

The 10-day live-fire Han Kuang exercise began on Wednesday, just a day after a Chinese military spokesperson warned of Beijing’s “inevitable reunification” with Taiwan. The annual drills are being held amid reports of escalating harassment from China, at a time when global attention has been focused on the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza, the recent US-Israel-Iran conflict, and the Russia-Ukraine war.

“We are learning from the situation in Ukraine in recent years and realistically thinking about what Taiwan might face … in real combat,” a senior defence official told the Reuters news agency, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the exercise.

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said the war games exercise, including combating “grey zone tactics” deployed by China that stop just short of all-out warfare, will draw in the army, navy and air force, backed by a record 22,000 reservists.

About 300 reservists were seen entering a junior high school in the city of Taoyuan that has been emptied for summer recess, with troops receiving weapons training, Reuters reported.

Communications strike, invasion scenarios

The drills kicked off with exercises intended to counter Beijing’s ships that have been harassing Taiwanese vessels around island groups close to the Chinese coast, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said.

The effort will later focus on simulated anti-landing exercises, including fortifying ports and potential Chinese landing points on an island 160km (100 miles) from the Chinese coast, The Associated Press news agency reported.

The drills would focus, in their early stages, on testing how Taiwan is equipped to cope with the kind of attack on its command and communication systems that is expected to precede any Chinese invasion, senior defence officials told Reuters. The exercise would assess how Taiwan’s military could adapt and decentralise command in the event of such an attack.

The exercises will also involve the use of new High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, made by Lockheed Martin, as well as Taiwan-developed Sky Sword surface-to-air missiles for the first time. Taiwan has recently received new military equipment, from tanks to waterborne drones.

Beijing: Reunification ‘inevitable’

China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own and has ramped up military pressure around the island over the last five years, with war games and daily patrols.

It has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control, prompting concerns that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan could one day eventuate and ignite a broader war.

Taiwan’s government objects to China’s claims of sovereignty and says it is up to the island’s people to determine their future.

China’s Ministry of National Defense said before the drills on Tuesday that nothing would be able to prevent the island’s eventual reunification with Beijing.

“The Han Kuang exercise is nothing but a bluffing and self-deceiving trick by the DPP authorities, attempting to bind the Taiwanese people to the Taiwan independence cart and harm Taiwan for the selfish interests of one party,” Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson Colonel Jiang Bing said at a news conference, referring to Taiwan’s governing party, the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party.

“No matter how they perform or what weapons they use, they cannot resist the [People’s Liberation Army’s] anti-independence sword and the historical trend of the motherland’s inevitable reunification,” Jiang added.

Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said Beijing appeared to have attempted to disrupt preparations for the exercise on Tuesday, carrying out “harassment operations around Taiwan’s air and sea domains”, The Associated Press reported.

The ministry said Tuesday that Taiwan had deployed surveillance measures and “dispatched mission aircraft, vessels, and shore-based missile systems to appropriately respond”.