Taiwan's armed forces wrapped up their most operationally demanding live-fire exercise in recent years on August 14, completing ten straight days and nine nights of uninterrupted drills that covered more than 400 training scenarios — and, for the first time, openly rehearsed concepts that would have seemed politically uncomfortable not long ago, from combat inside Taipei's streets to covert stay-behind operations in simulated enemy-held territory.
Han Kuang 42: Ten Days, 400 Scenarios, One Clear Strategic Signal
Han Kuang 42 unfolded in four sequential phases: combat deployment on August 5, force protection on August 6, joint anti-landing and coastal strike operations from August 7 to 10, and in-depth defense with sustained combat from August 11 to 14. Of the 117 confirmed training items made public, the final two phases accounted for 87 — a deliberate signal of where Taiwan's military now places its emphasis.
Some observers questioned the design, asking why Taiwan was rehearsing for a land invasion when the People's Liberation Army can already threaten the island with ballistic missiles, long-range precision fires, and a naval blockade that would never require a single soldier to set foot on a beach. The question reflects a misreading of how joint exercises work. The weight given to each phase reflects the General Staff Headquarters' training priorities for this year, not a prediction of how a future conflict would actually unfold.
China's Type 075 Ships and a New Bridge Rewrote Taiwan's Defense Plan
Two developments since last year's Han Kuang 41 exercise directly shaped this year's planning.
The first was China's "Justice Mission-2025" exercise in late 2025, in which the PLA deployed a Type 075 amphibious task group — centered on the landing helicopter assault ship of that designation — to waters roughly 300 kilometers south of Taiwan's southernmost tip, Cape Eluanbi, and practiced air assault operations from the sea. The exercise raised the credible prospect of the PLA seizing Orchid Island or Green Island — Taiwan's small outlying islands off its southeastern coast — as forward fire bases or staging points for strikes against the eastern flank. In response, Han Kuang 42 included reinforcement scenarios for both islands from the main island, a first for the exercise series.
The second was the May 12 completion of the Danjiang Bridge, which links the Bali and Tamsui districts of New Taipei City across the mouth of the Tamsui River — a natural barrier north of Taipei. Defense planners concluded that a PLA force landing on the southern bank could, if it secured the bridge, rapidly push across the Guandu Plain and drive directly into the capital. This year's drill responded with the first-ever bridge-denial exercise on the Danjiang span, establishing a 200-meter obstacle zone on the deck.
Han Kuang 42 also served as the first full-scale validation exercise for two new wartime command structures Taiwan has quietly established.
The Naval Littoral Operations Command is designed to control shore-based anti-ship missile batteries, fast attack craft, radar networks, and an expanding inventory of unmanned surface and aerial vehicles. Its mission: to contest PLA amphibious forces across the Taiwan Strait before any landing element reaches the shoreline. The Garrison Area Command, built around the Military Police Command as its wartime core, would integrate all combat, reserve, and logistical units across metropolitan Taipei under a single wartime authority. Both structures were exercised extensively during August's drills.
Kill Chains and Drone Coverage Now Reach Down to the Brigade Level
The exercise showed a military that has absorbed lessons from Ukraine and other recent conflicts faster than outside observers may have anticipated.
Kill-chain integration was a centerpiece. Joint Fires Coordination Centers were activated at operational theater level, with special operations teams and drone units tasked to locate and designate targets for long-range fires. Most significantly, Taiwan deployed mobile anti-ship missiles to the Penghu Islands — the archipelago sitting in the middle of the Taiwan Strait — for the first time, creating overlapping fields of fire with shore-based batteries on Taiwan's west coast that would significantly complicate any PLA maritime approach.
Drones appeared at every level of the force. Taiwan has established a dedicated Drone Training Command, and units down to the brigade now operate drone squadrons carrying reconnaissance, loitering munitions, anti-armor, and first-person-view (FPV) platforms. Some front-line units demonstrated real-time 3D printing of small drones to replace battlefield losses. Tanks, Clouded Leopard armored carriers, and air defense launcher vehicles were also fitted with anti-drone slat armor — apparently still in the testing phase, with additional overhead canopy protection added to parked vehicles.
Special forces units used the Team Awareness Kit (TAK), a battlefield situational-awareness platform adopted from U.S. military software, to share real-time intelligence with adjacent units during reconnaissance, ambush, and sabotage missions. Taiwan's army is now validating TAK use across regular infantry formations as a preparatory step toward wider fielding.
Taipei Rehearses Urban Combat Openly for the First Time
Perhaps the sharpest break from past exercises was the scope and candor of the urban warfare component.
Military police troops rode Taipei's Bannan Metro Line from central Taipei to reinforce the Nangang district. Songshan Airport and its surroundings were defended against simulated air assault. Guangfu Bridge, spanning the Xindian River in Taipei's south, was fortified with concrete barriers, concertina wire, steel hedgehogs, HESCO barriers — and buses, deployed in an intentionally angled pattern with walking corridors between them. The arrangement, a departure from the nose-to-nose rows of previous years, allows defenders to withdraw under vehicular cover while channeling any pursuing force into prepared fire lanes along the bridge approaches.
In central Taiwan, a combined-arms drill in Taichung City's Dajia district put tanks, armored vehicles, attack helicopters, and drones into a live urban environment simultaneously. Reserve personnel participating in street-corner defense scenarios demonstrated interlocking fields of fire and mutual coverage of blind spots — tactical detail that suggests sustained improvement in routine training, not just display-day polish.
Taiwan's military also, for the first time, publicly disclosed Marine Corps amphibious reconnaissance personnel conducting stay-behind operations inside simulated enemy-occupied territory — including personnel in civilian clothes moving through occupied zones in civilian vehicles. The concept derives from U.S. special operations doctrine and represents a significant evolution in Taiwan's publicly acknowledged defense posture. Army units also conducted deep air infiltration exercises, with special operations troops deploying from Taipei-area staging points into simulated contested rear areas near Taoyuan.
Why Taiwan Must Be a Stone, Not an Egg, to Deter the PLA
The heavy emphasis on homeland defense and urban combat has unsettled parts of the Taiwanese public. Preparing to fight inside cities means accepting, at least in planning, that cities may become battlegrounds — a prospect with obvious human costs.
The strategic logic, however, is worth stating plainly. A military prepared only to contest a landing at the waterline presents a fundamentally different deterrence problem than one capable of sustained, organized resistance deep inside Taiwan's territory. The first is like an egg: a hard outer shell that, once cracked, gives way to a soft and easily consumed interior. The second is like a stone — difficult to grasp, impossible to swallow, and liable to break the teeth of anyone who tries.
If Taiwan's goal is to delay or prevent Beijing from concluding that military force is the most practical option for resolving the cross-strait dispute, then Taiwan's armed forces must look like a stone in the PLA's calculations. Han Kuang 42 is evidence that they are, at minimum, trying to become one.
*The author is an associate research fellow at the Division for Defense Strategy and Resources, Institute for National Defense and Security Research (INDSR).
