Taiwan tested HIMARS on the coast facing China — Reuters
On Wednesday, the Taiwanese military conducted the first live-fire tests of the new HIMARS mobile rocket system in the central Taichung region on the island’s west coast.
During large-scale military exercises, units simulated repelling an attack by Chinese troops attempting to land on the coast.
Using American weaponry, the army demonstrated its ability to operate on a “shoot-and-scoot” principle to protect equipment from enemy counterattacks.
Analysts consider the beaches and muddy shoals on Taiwan’s west coast, located directly across the Taiwan Strait from China, to be the most likely site for a Beijing-led amphibious operation.
The Chinese leadership, which considers democratically governed Taiwan to be its territory, has never ruled out the use of force to establish control over the island.
Military aircraft and ships from mainland China conduct patrols and show-of-force maneuvers around the island almost daily.
The Taiwanese armed forces conducted their first test firings of Lockheed Martin’s highly mobile artillery rocket systems last year, though those tests took place off the eastern coast.
The current exercises were intended to demonstrate the mobility of the HIMARS systems and their ability to quickly leave a firing position immediately after a salvo, which allows them to avoid being detected by enemy radar.
“Our HIMARS demonstrated the unit’s solid combat capabilities and successfully completed this exercise,” said Company Commander Ko Min-pin following the completion of combat tasks.
Command representatives emphasized that such high tactical flexibility significantly improves the overall survivability of units and missile systems directly on the battlefield.
Currently, the Taiwanese military is actively modernizing for asymmetric warfare by introducing lightweight yet powerful mobile weapons capable of inflicting serious losses on superior enemy forces.
The key goal of the defense strategy is to transform the island into a so-called “porcupine”—one that is difficult to attack and capable of effectively surviving an initial massive strike from the mainland.
With a range of about 300 km, HIMARS systems are capable of destroying coastal targets in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian.
Reuters reports on this.
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