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Lai Rehearses Nighttime Evacuation in Taiwan’s Han Kuang War Games

The exercise tested whether Taiwan’s government can continue to command and coordinate under a simulated leadership-targeting strike to strengthen resilience against PLA-style attacks and recent international precedents.

Overview

  • President Lai Ching-te took part in a late-night Wan Chun evacuation drill that moved him from the Presidential Office to the underground Dazhi command centre while wearing body armour and riding in a CM-34 Clouded Leopard armored vehicle.
  • Officials used multiple convoys as decoys and filmed briefings during the exercise to test command continuity, interagency coordination and emergency-response procedures under a simulated ‘decapitation’ strike.
  • The 10-day Han Kuang exercises have mobilised roughly 20,000 reservists and deployed mobile air-defence systems such as Patriot and Tien-Kung units to tactical positions in Taipei to protect key nodes.
  • On the coast, Lai inspected live naval and Coast Guard drills in Kaohsiung that used Kuang Hua VI missile boats, an Anping-class patrol vessel and low-flying attack and kamikaze drones to rehearse layered maritime defence.
  • Taiwan says the more realistic, resilience-focused training responds to PLA rehearsals of leadership strikes and recent foreign operations that raised urgency, and the drills include new communications-stress tests such as a planned deliberate slowdown of mobile internet.