Exclusive | Taiwan Lands Troops on Orchid Island in Doctrine Shift

Taiwan's military deployed ground forces to Orchid Island for the first time in nearly 30 years during a joint defense exercise that concluded on July 17, marking a significant reassessment of how Taipei defends its eastern flank.

The Joint Defense Exercise, organized by Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense, served as a preparatory drill for Han Kuang Exercise No. 42 — Taiwan's largest annual military exercise, scheduled for August. The drill simulated enemy aerial threat scenarios and stress-tested joint force integration, decentralized kill chains, and distributed command structures across all service branches. Numerous units conducted cross-sector reinforcement operations during the exercise, with military sources describing the logic as analogous to driving a road for the first time — you only know whether it works once you've actually used it.

Eastern Taiwan — encompassing Hualien and Taitung counties — has historically served as a strategic force preservation zone, where aircraft and assets from the west would be repositioned in the event of conflict. Fighter jets from western air bases routinely transfer to the hardened Jishan Air Base and Zhihang Air Base during exercises. That assumption is now under strain.

The People's Liberation Army has significantly escalated its presence in waters east of Taiwan in recent years, including deploying aircraft carriers for exercises in the area. Military officials say the traditional comfort of a secure eastern rear has eroded.

During the exercise, the Second Theater Command organized contingency forces for the first time to board vessels carrying organic weapons and military supplies and sail to Green Island and Orchid Island for island defense operations. Units conducted on-site reconnaissance of key defensive positions, hardened fortifications, and mobile fighting positions, while running command, control, and communications link tests.

Heavy assets from the Hualien Defense Command — including M60A3 main battle tanks, CM21 armored personnel carriers, and 155mm howitzers — conducted a night transit through the Suhua Highway Improvement to simulate a relief-in-place of defense forces in the Lanyang area of Yilan County, validating the cross-sector reinforcement capability of eastern heavy units.

The idea to push troops onto Orchid Island originated with a single officer: Major General Hu Ya-chung (胡雅中), commander of the Taitung Area Command under the Second Theater Command.

A graduate of the Army Officer Academy's 86th class, Hu previously commanded the Lieyu Island garrison battalion under Kinmen Defense Command — a posting the military refers to internally as the "Island Master." Lieyu Island sits roughly seven kilometers from China's port city of Xiamen, placing it among the most forward-positioned garrisons in Taiwan's entire order of battle.

Promoted to major general in December 2025, Hu's prior posting was deputy director of the Joint Combat Power Training Division under the Training and Inspection Department, a role responsible for joint operations training, combat effectiveness verification, and major exercise planning. He has briefed Ministry of National Defense press conferences on tri-service training assessment frameworks, and those who know his background say the Orchid Island deployment was not improvised.

The conceptual groundwork was laid in April 2026, during the Han Kuang 42 computer wargame, which repeatedly modeled PLA strikes on Taiwan from the east, including seizure scenarios for both Green Island and Orchid Island. It was Hu who, in the immediate readiness exercise component, first organized forces to deploy to the two islands for island defense operations — with the stated goal of preventing the PLA from landing long-range fires ashore.

The strategic concern driving this shift centers on the PLA's PHL-191 multiple launch rocket system. According to publicly available information, the PHL-191 can fire 370mm or 500mm rockets with a maximum range of up to 500 kilometers — sufficient to cover every significant target across Taiwan. If PLA forces positioned PHL-191 batteries on Orchid Island or Green Island, Jishan and Zhihang air bases — the very assets Taiwan has tried to preserve by moving them eastward — would become primary targets, and the entire island would fall within PLA strike coverage.

Chieh Chung (揭仲), a commissioned associate research fellow at Taiwan's Institute for National Defense and Security Research, told Storm Media that the PLA's threat posture has fundamentally changed. The PLA has deployed Type 075 amphibious assault ships southeast of Taiwan and conducted helicopter launch-and-recovery drills. As China's Type 075 fleet expands, Chieh said, the scenario of PLA forces seizing Green Island or Orchid Island at the outset of a conflict has moved from implausible to a genuine contingency.

"If the PLA takes Green Island and Orchid Island and stations long-range rocket artillery there, fire coverage extends across the entire eastern coast," Chieh said. He added that the islands could also serve as forward helicopter operating bases, enabling armed rotorcraft to strike targets throughout eastern Taiwan.

Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲), director of the Institute of Defense Strategy and Resources at the same institution, noted that the PLA's power projection capabilities have grown substantially over six years. He pointed to Taiwan's 2018 deployment of Hawk surface-to-air missile systems to Green Island — a response to PLA far-sea operations — as the first step in a series of escalating defensive measures, with the troop deployments in this exercise marking the next phase: island recapture and recovery operations.

Not everyone agrees that physically deploying troops to the eastern outer islands is the right answer.

At a 2025 Taiwan Strait Defense Wargame organized by multiple Taiwanese security institutions and led by former Chief of General Staff Admiral Lee Hsi-ming (李喜明) — which drew on nine retired generals and eight retired lieutenant generals from Taiwan, the United States, and Japan — the final report concluded plainly: "Taiwan's eastern region is no longer a strategic barrier; consideration should be given to building effective counter-strike capabilities on the east coast."

Lee cautioned against simply relocating forces eastward. Given current PLA capabilities — including submarines and bombers capable of launching cruise missiles from eastern waters — sheltering aircraft inside hardened mountain tunnel facilities at Jishan may no longer guarantee their survival. A single missile entering a tunnel entrance, he warned, could destroy an entire wing of aircraft.

Lee proposed instead a "sea control from land" posture: positioning naval forces in nearshore coastal waters on the eastern side, backed by shore-based air defense missiles and anti-ship missile batteries capable of threatening PLA naval forces, while anti-submarine patrol aircraft hunt PLA submarines. Defensive firepower, under this model, comes from shore rather than from forces deployed on offshore islands.

Military insiders acknowledged the debate is unresolved. One source said PLA planners retain the initiative in selecting a landing site, but any amphibious operation requires observable preparatory steps — including mobilization from the Chinese mainland and extensive logistical buildup — making a sudden seizure difficult to conceal. A retired Army officer identified the Lizetze area in Yilan County as the most operationally viable PLA landing site on the eastern coast, noting that Taiwan has maintained anti-landing defense plans there and conducted exercises as far back as 2003.

The same officer acknowledged, however, that PLA helicopters have been regularly observed flying in waters east of Taiwan, testing range and fuel consumption. Should a sufficient rotary-wing force be assembled, a direct assault on eastern Taiwan could not be entirely ruled out.

Whether Green Island and Orchid Island can be held — and by what combination of offshore garrisons, shore-based fires, and rapid reinforcement — remains an open question. What the Joint Defense Exercise established is that the military has begun treating those islands not as an afterthought, but as a potential first point of contact in any future conflict. The full-scale Han Kuang 42 exercise in August will be the first real test of whether the doctrine can be made to work. （Related： Taiwan's Drills Simulate Blackouts; Expert Urges Military Comms Reform ｜ Latest ）

​Original Article in Chinese​