Will Taiwan’s decentralised military model raise more questions than it solves?
Defence ministry briefs lawmakers on ‘heightened risk’ of sudden strike designed to paralyse command and control systems at start of conflict
The shift comes as defence and intelligence officials warn lawmakers that mainland China has significantly expanded its ability to pivot from military exercises to actual combat.
This expansion raised the risk that a crisis in the Taiwan Strait could escalate with little warning and overwhelm traditional top-down command structures, according to a briefing provided to legislators on Wednesday.
That evolution had narrowed Taiwan’s response window and heightened the risk of a sudden strike designed to paralyse command-and-control systems at the outset of a conflict, the ministry warned.
Under existing contingency plans, if Beijing were to announce large-scale or “composite” military operations around the Taiwan Strait, the island’s armed forces would activate a response centre, raise readiness levels and conduct immediate combat-readiness drills to prevent the PLA from “shifting from exercises to war”, it said.
