Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Liu Shu Fu/Office of the President/Flickr/CC BY 4.0
THE TAIWANESE GOVERNMENT’S dilemmas can be observed in questions about OpSec that have arisen after military drills conducted as part of the annual Han Kuang exercises earlier this year. Such drills put Taiwan’s military equipment, as well as plans for how they would be deployed in wartime, in public view more than in past years. However, this raises questions about whether the public nature of the drills is revealing details of Taiwan’s defense that should otherwise be kept under wraps, given that China was in all probability observing the drills carefully.
The Lai administration currently seeks to set a new tone for defense, with Wellington Koo serving as the first civilian Minister of Defense in over a decade. Koo sought to set a new tone immediately, ending bayonet training exercises that had long been understood to be impractical and useless in modern warfare, as well as shifting the changing of the guard at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial to take place outside, rather than in front of the 6.3-meter statue of Chiang Kai-shek in the memorial hall.
With an end to bayonet training, Koo was signaling that he would focus on practical measures, rather than the many outdated practices that continue to take place in the military. With a shift in the location of the changing of the guard at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial, Koo was signaling that he would find a compromise between the pan-Green Lai administration and the traditional fidelity to the ROC of the military, in not ending the changing of the guard altogether, but shifting it to a different location where the focus would not be on Chiang Kai-shek’s cult of personality.
This, too, is the case with military drills. Under Koo, the attempt has been to emphasize the practicality of drills that would provide actual experience for combat scenarios, rather than scripted displays that are primarily for publicity. This can be observed in the Han Kuang exercises, which took place at a far larger scale than in the past in occurring across ten days, and which mobilized 22,000 reservists, as the largest Han Kuang exercises to date.
Still, at the same time, one notes that there did continue to be elements of the Han Kuang exercises which were intended for public consumption, such as holding sheltering drills in supermarkets, or the deployment of troops in MRTs in Taipei. The idea was to produce images, video, and other media that would be circulated in the press, stressing the significance of drills, reinforcing the message that the Lai administration hopes to communicate: that Taiwanese society should be prepared for the possibility of a conflict.
Hence, the question of optics when it comes to military displays, in that there is necessarily a trade-off between drills conducted with high publicity and whether this discloses information to the Chinese military. At the same time, one notes that the military probably also needs to boost its profile in society if it hopes to drive up recruitment, especially with the publicity budget for sections of the government slashed by the KMT’s controversial budgets.
Nevertheless, it is also important to note that militaries across the world often hold displays, such as parades, with their military hardware. These are often the “big ticket” items that the government spends a great deal on. With such displays, there is always the risk of disclosing information–even if, again, part of the intent is to draw the attention of the public.
Yet part of the intent with military displays is also to communicate with possible adversaries–in displaying one’s current capacities, this can have a deterrent effect against attacks by potential enemies. In this sense, there is more to disclosing one’s own capacities besides simply informing one’s adversaries of one’s vulnerabilities, but in showing one’s strengths. This, too, is important to keep in mind with regard to recent drills conducted in a much more public manner by Taiwan.
There is evidence to suggest that China may be stepping up attempts to gather information about Taiwan’s defenses. Among individuals arrested for Chinese spying in the past year, this includes individuals accused of gathering information about military installations, as well as forming a paramilitary cell that would conduct acts of sabotage in wartime. In the meantime, the escalation of military drills reflects the increased tension of the present times in Taiwan.