{"id":70326,"date":"2025-07-25T23:11:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T23:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2025\/07\/25\/taiwans-han-kuang-drills-demonstrate-its-quills-are-growing-sharper\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T01:25:34","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T01:25:34","slug":"taiwans-han-kuang-drills-demonstrate-its-quills-are-growing-sharper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/opinion\/2025\/07\/25\/taiwans-han-kuang-drills-demonstrate-its-quills-are-growing-sharper\/","title":{"rendered":"Taiwan\u2019s Han Kuang drills demonstrate its quills are growing sharper"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Taiwan concluded its annual Han Kuang military exercise<\/a> on July 18, the 41st iteration and the most extensive<\/a> in recent years. A review of the missions rehearsed, the hardware involved and the scope of the exercise demonstrates Taipei\u2019s important but insufficient progress toward building defense capabilities essential to convincing Beijing that it should not launch military aggression<\/a> against the free people of Taiwan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taiwan has accelerated efforts<\/a> to modernize its military in recent years. This year\u2019s joint, multidomain exercise<\/a> expanded in length from five to 10 days, ran continuously and introduced additional realistic scenarios such as countering gray-zone coercion and fighting in urban areas. It also featured several critical U.S.-produced systems, including the M1A2T Abrams main battle tank<\/a>, High Mobility Artillery Rocket System<\/a> (HIMARS), Patriot<\/a> long-range air and missile defense system and man-portable Stinger surface-to-air missile<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While it has been alleged<\/a> that delays in deliveries of these systems to Taiwan were the result of U.S. assistance to Ukraine<\/a>, new systems have continued arriving in recent months, highlighting the progress<\/a> made by the U.S. defense industrial base since 2022. In particular, Taiwan is now expected to receive more HIMARS, and on an accelerated timeline, than it did before the 2022 Russian invasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\t