Taiwan is building a "next-generation ground combat wireless network" designed to keep military commanders connected to troops — and to police, firefighters, and hospitals — even if China destroys the island's telecom infrastructure in a war, according to military sources. The project, personally driven by Defense Minister Wellington Koo (顧立雄), is drawing close attention from the People's Liberation Army.
The effort is backed by serious money. Of Taiwan's NT$570 billion special budget for economic, social, and national security resilience, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) received NT$107.8 billion, including roughly NT$42.6 billion for strengthening homeland defense capabilities and about NT$70.3 billion for upgrading information and communications systems and equipment. The "communications fees" line in the ministry's 2026 annual budget has also jumped by an order of magnitude, from millions of New Taiwan dollars to tens of millions.
The network is the second leg of a broader communications-resilience push. Storm Media previously reported exclusively that the MND has quietly built a military data backup facility in a third country — not the United States — with a related site operating discreetly in Taipei's Xinyi District.
Taiwan Models Its Combat Network on the US Army's LandWarNet
The conceptual template is American. The US Army's LandWarNet is the service's global network for collecting, storing, managing, analyzing, and distributing information, and forms the Army's portion of the US military's Global Information Grid (GIG). It encompasses all Army-owned or leased computers and security systems, moving data through space-based, airborne, and ground channels, both wireless and wired. Taiwan intends to build its combat wireless network along the same lines to achieve communications resilience.
Because the army carries the central role in the American system, Taiwan started there too. In August 2025, according to a contract award notice on the government e-procurement platform, the Military Police Command spent more than NT$419 million to commission Chunghwa Telecom for a TETRA radio system upgrade, replacing aging handheld sets.
TETRA — Terrestrial Trunked Radio, a digital trunked radio standard operating in UHF bands (commonly 380–400, 410–430, and 450–470 MHz) — is used worldwide by public safety and government agencies for group calls, dispatch, and wide-area private networks. It is not the backbone of a true military field communications system, but it offers clear audio, mature dispatching, low operating and training costs, and cross-agency interoperability, making it well suited to the Military Police's rear-area and urban missions — special protective duties, judicial policing, homeland security, and capital garrison support — in environments with controlled access and stable power. Storm Media obtained images of a Military Police TETRA relay vehicle driving past the Presidential Office; deliberately de-identified, the truck carried no camouflage and looked like an ordinary pickup with a box body.
Army Sheds "Big Army" Doctrine and Borrows TETRA for Han Kuang 42
Notably, the Army Command Headquarters is now planning to adopt TETRA as one of multiple communication channels — a significant break from doctrine. A military source explained that the Military Police originally adopted TETRA because conventional radios struggled with terrain interference in the capital garrison area, while the army long operated on a "big army" model of point-to-point links or fixed relay stations. In recent years the army has shifted toward the approach used by police and fire services: dense networks of fixed base stations supplemented by mobile base stations, and even airborne relays.
The concept faces its first field test soon. During the Han Kuang 42 exercise in August 2026, the army will borrow TETRA radios from the Military Police Command for use by the Third Theater Command, which is responsible for defending northern Taiwan, validating whether logistics elements — fuel convoys, medical units — can communicate directly with front-line troops.
Edge Computing Servers Push Decentralized Command Down to Battalions
Beyond radios, the military has procured edge computing servers to enable the decentralized command that asymmetric warfare demands. Taiwan's forces now use the TAK (Tactical Assault Kit) command-and-control system, which requires server-based computing and cloud connectivity — a vulnerability if the MND headquarters or central servers are destroyed in wartime, which could take down the entire command system.
The solution is to distribute compact, military-grade edge servers at every echelon, from brigades and battalions down to smaller tactical units. Even if higher-echelon links are paralyzed, brigade- and battalion-level command and control would survive, sustaining data exchange for drones, intelligence, and reconnaissance — achieving what planners call "distributed command and control with mission command." The servers, along with broadband server equipment, are expected to be fully fielded by 2027 at the latest. These are systems genuinely intended for wartime use, the sources said — and the Chinese Communist Party is closely tracking their progress.
Wellington Koo Links Military, Police, Fire, and Medical Networks
The larger ambition is that the military will no longer fight alone. The next-generation network will absorb the army's new communications architecture, but its defining feature is interoperability: pulling police, fire, and medical services into a single wartime communications web.
That vision is Koo's. Before becoming defense minister, he served as secretary-general of the National Security Council, where he championed whole-of-society defense resilience and studied how military power could operate in concert with police, fire, medical, and civilian resources. Military radios, however, were confined to military frequency bands — a barrier Koo judged incompatible with society-wide resilience. After taking over the MND, he ordered the fielding of multiband handheld radios. Small-scale deployment is complete, with full deployment expected in early 2027, connecting military, police, fire, and medical communications.
Asked whether talking to civilian agencies compromises security, a military source said the multiband radios encrypt automatically on connection — an international standard — and that a unified communications protocol will allow all parties to interoperate on the same basis.
Satellite, 4G, 5G, and Broadband Radio Form Layered Wartime Backups
The army's command-and-control systems currently ride on 4G and 5G — which raises an obvious wartime question: what happens if Chunghwa Telecom's network goes down? Satellites can be blocked or jammed, and commercial telecom infrastructure can be severed. The answer is broadband data radio — a data-transmission system distinct from the multiband voice radios — which suits Taiwan's terrain and is comparatively difficult to jam. The military is deliberately layering multiple channels: satellite, 4G, 5G, and broadband radio. "That is what resilience means," the source stressed.
The stakes are clear to planners. In a Taiwan Strait war, the island's dense urbanization would produce a brutally complex electromagnetic environment: high-power jamming from both sides, radar emissions, electronic deception, and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) effects. Ensuring that soldiers, police, firefighters, medics — and civilians — can share a common picture and pass orders through the interference is the problem the military is now working to solve, and the thread running through Koo's agenda from the National Security Council to the defense ministry. （Related： Exclusive | Taiwan's Elite "Assault Troops" Train Through Typhoon-Level Rain in Taichung Mountains ｜ Latest ）
