Taiwan drills: PLA sends in extra troops to back up Eastern Theatre Command
- PLA brings in air force personnel and anti-submarine aircraft from neighbouring theatre commands for military exercises
- Troops expected to be rotated through to work with Eastern Theatre Command for ‘Taiwan contingency’, analyst says
State broadcaster CCTV released footage showing Russian-made Ka-28 anti-sub helicopters taking part in the air and naval joint operation.
“It’s essential for air force squadrons in the Southern and Northern theatre commands, as well as warships overseeing the Yellow Sea and South China Sea in the North and East fleets, to work together with the Eastern Theatre Command in the event of a Taiwan contingency,” said Song Zhongping, a former PLA instructor, said.
“A possible war over Taiwan is a complicated and comprehensive operation of A2/AD [anti-access and area-denial], requiring the air force and warships from the three theatre commands to share different roles in their tasks to stop foreign military interventions from the south and north.”
Andrei Chang, editor-in-chief of Canada-based Kanwa Asian Defence, said Beijing applied similar tactics in the aftermath of its “counter-attack war” with Vietnam in 1979, with People’s Liberation Army troops from what were then eight military commands taking turns being deployed to mountain borders in Guangxi and Yunnan provinces for its long “attrition fight” until 1989.
Lu Li-shih, a former instructor at Taiwan’s Naval Academy in Kaohsiung, said the PLA’s previous training indicated its pilots no longer found the sky and waters around Taiwan a “strange space”.
“Early reports showed even pilots from the Liaoning air force base under the Northern Theatre Command were flying to Shuimen Air Base in Fujian province, which is opposite Taiwan,” Lu said, referring to a CCTV report in March last year.
In the CCTV video footage, about the all-weather flight training of a flying brigade based in northeastern Liaoning province, pilots flew fighter jets to land at an airbase with a stone tablet showing “Air Force Bridgehead”, a landmark at the PLA’s Ningde military base in Fujian province and just 250km (155 miles) from Taipei.
CCTV also broadcast a video in March 2021 declaring that different theatre commands had flown 5,000km for cross-region training, with pilots from the north flying to Fujian on the southeastern coast, while navy pilots in the south headed to the high-altitude Himalayas.
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The Eastern Theatre Command, which oversees the Taiwan Strait, announced on Wednesday it had “successfully wrapped up” its six-day war games, and would “continue to organise regular combat readiness patrols against Taiwan”.
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‘Proud of trip to Taiwan’: US House Speaker Pelosi describes visit that angered mainland China
During the drills following Pelosi’s departure on August 3, mainland military jets crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait, a de facto boundary between mainland China and Taiwan drawn by the United States in 1955 in the aftermath of the Chinese civil war. Both sides had largely abided by the line in the decades since.
“Pelosi’s Taipei visit has caused Beijing to lose points in diplomacy, but it helped the PLA grab an opportunity to cross the median line that divides the Taiwan Strait,” said Ni Lexiong, a political-science professor at Shanghai University of Political Science and Law.
“If the PLA’s war games become regular operations in the future, that means the mainland side has successfully scrapped the so-called median line, a move to offset Beijing’s diplomatic failure in the wake of Pelosi’s Taiwan tour.”
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A retired senior colonel and a military historian agreed, adding that the PLA had seized the chance for full-scale “real combat training” for a Taiwan contingency.
“The PLA Air Force and Navy finally got the legitimate chance to stage their close reconnaissance along the coastline of Taiwan,” the senior colonel, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity, told the South China Morning Post.
