Taiwan plans to boost combat capabilities of its reserve forces
Taiwan is planning to boost combat capabilities of its reserve forces by increasing their training hours, as tensions between China and Taiwan continue to escalate dramatically.
The country’s minister of national defense Chiu Kuo-Cheng on Tuesday informed that the new program will double shooting exercises by increasing the current 5-7 training days to 14 days while combat training will be extended to 56 hours from the current half-day training.
Trainees will also be required to more than double the amount of bullets they fire in shooting exercises.
More than 14-thousand reservists, accounting for 13 percent of the 110-thousand troops, will take part in the program. However, further decisions on whether to broaden the program will be made after current changes have been applied, he said.
Taiwan has reconstructed its military forces from a conscript military to a volunteer-dominated professional force in recent years.
The US has supplied Taiwan’s military vast cache of equipment and weapons, including missiles and fighter jets. A video released last year, broadcast widely in Taiwan media, showed US troops taking part in a military exercise. The US troop had been secretly training Taiwanese troops since 2020.
Both the US and Taiwanese officials had dismissed the speculation that time, emphasizing that the two sides were involved in “bilateral military exchanges and cooperation.”
The US military support to Taiwan comes as relations between Washington and Beijing continue to deteriorate.
Chiu has previously acknowledged that China has the capacity to invade the island by 2025 and urged the parliament for extra military spending last month.
This comes after China sent record number of jets into international airspace close to Taiwan. No shots were fired and Chinese aircrafts stayed away from Taiwan's airspace.
China considers Taiwan as part of its national territory and under the ‘One China policy’ almost all world countries recognize that.
However, Taiwan considers itself a sovereign state, and the island has been self-ruled since it split from the communist-ruled mainland in 1949 after a long civil war.
China views Taiwan as a breakaway province that has to be reunited with the mainland.
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