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Missing the Forest for the Trees in Taiwan’s Defense Preparations

Beyond exercises and equipment, strategic developments in Taiwan’s military preparedness are being overlooked.

A guided-missile fast attack craft with the ROC Navy participates in the 2026 Han Kuang exercise, Aug. 8, 2026.

In recent years, Taiwan’s military issues have received considerable discussion, from changes in Taiwan’s annual large-scale Han Kuang exercises to recommendations on equipment procurement. These are all quite important areas of change, but the most core issue seems to have received much less discussion: how exactly the Taiwan military may fight. The aforementioned changes in exercises and equipment procurement, in the end, are all meant to serve the kind of war Taiwan is prepared to fight. Taiwan has had some developments in this area that have received limited attention and discussion, but their importance is definitely no less than the developments in exercises and equipment.

The key is to comprehensively understand Taiwan’s efforts and preparations from the strategic level, using what the Taiwan military most often says about what kind of war to fight, what equipment to have, what kind of force structure is needed, and what training to conduct. Taiwan has moved from its past concepts of defeating the enemy on the opposite shore or seeking a decisive battle in the littoral area to actually carrying out an erosion strategy and sustained operations in recent years. To that end, Taiwan has continued to strengthen the army’s active-duty combat power in the northern region to build a layered defensive network and regional force superiority. Meanwhile, the cumulative duration of large-scale exercises in 2026 has already accumulated to nearly one month. There is also something that many people might have noticed but not realized: the significant expansion of Taiwan’s navy in recent years. 

At the same time, these developments also bring out the current difficulties Taiwan faces in joint operations across the services. This is one of the most critical areas to watch in Taiwan’s future defense development. In recent years, experts have paid considerable attention to the Taiwan military’s efforts toward decentralization, but in practice, joint command and control is the key to whether Taiwan’s combat capability can be improved.

Further Concentration of Forces in Northern Taiwan

The key to an erosion strategy and sustained operations is to delay and strike enemy forces through layered forces. Although Taiwan emphasizes decentralized command and control, this means emphasizing that a single operational unit can continue to carry out assigned actions based on higher-level operational objectives when command and control is disrupted. In terms of military operations, strategically concentrating forces to make it difficult for the enemy to break through and advance is quite important. And this is also what Taiwan is doing.

Northern Taiwan is where the political center is located, and it also concentrates important operational command organizations and transportation hubs. More than one-third of Taiwan’s population lives there. More than about half of the Taiwan active-duty brigade-level forces of the Republic of China (ROC) Army and Marine Corps are normally stationed in the northern region (north of Miaoli and Yilan), including the main combat forces, combined arms brigades, Army Aviation units, and Marine Corps forces.

In particular, in recent years Taiwan has continued during exercises to additionally move units from other regions into the northern region to conduct reinforcement missions. This makes the forces concentrated in the northern region possibly reach nearly two-thirds of Taiwan’s active-duty ground forces. During the 2025 Han Kuang Exercise, the main reinforcement was carried out by units from the Marine Corps 99th Brigade moving north from southern Taiwan to reinforce Taoyuan and the greater Taipei area. The 2026 Han Kuang Exercise further expanded the reinforcement forces, including forces under the Marine Corps 99th Brigade and Army 564th Combined Arms Brigade from southern Taiwan, and the Army 586th Combined Arms Brigade from central Taiwan, which moved and deployed to the northern region.

Map by K. Tristan Tang and H. Rion Wu based on information collected and compiled from Military News Agency and Liberty Times.

This kind of deployment and training concentrates forces in northern Taiwan and is, to a considerable degree, a focus of Taiwan’s current sustained defensive operations. In September 2026, during the ROC Army’s annual large-scale Lu Sheng exercise, Maj. Gen. Lin Shih-wei, deputy commander of the Army Education, Training, and Doctrine Development Command, clearly stated at a press conference that this exercise was centered on the concept of successive resistance and sustained operations under Chief of the General Staff Admiral Mei Chia-shu’s erosion strategy. Most importantly, the exercise area was changed to northern Taiwan in order to conform with the focus on defensive operations and allow troops to become familiar with key terrain in the area of operations and the deployment and employment of troops and firepower.

Nearly One Month of Large-Scale Military Exercises

Another development deserving more attention is that in recent years the Taiwan military has begun extending the training duration of various live-force exercises. In addition to extending existing exercises such as the nationwide Han Kuang exercise and the brigade-level Lu Sheng exercise, it has also added several large-scale exercises. 

The accumulated time of these military exercises has led the Taiwan military this year to spend almost an entire month participating in various live-force exercises, far more than in the past few years. This includes the five-day Immediate Combat Readiness Exercise in June, the five-day Joint Defense Exercise in July, the 10-day Han Kuang Exercise in August, and the 10-day Lu Sheng Exercise expected in October. 

Besides allowing units to have more time to complete continuous training events that could not be conducted in the past, this also allows participating units to become familiar with scenarios related to long-duration sustained operations during a future Taiwan conflict. The longer training and exercise duration allows units to validate operations under prolonged combat scenarios, as well as the maintenance of combat capability and coordination with civilian sectors in the use of civilian resources,........

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