Great New Blog: the Bala Daily

The Bala Daily. Looks very promising. Here is their write-up of the recent Hankuang simulation of a PRC invasion of Taiwan:

The military has been holding the Han Kuang 22 (漢光 22, HK 22) exercises for the last week or so simulating a full scale PRC attack in 2012. For a long time, military exercises were just big fireworks shows for the brass and PR using live ammunition. Even computer simulations were halted once the first PLA (People's Liberation Army) boots stormed ashore.

We finally seem to be getting serious this time around... HK 22 continued past a PLA landing to, what some have dubbed... "the bitter end". Below is some information translated from the local media. Bear in mind that the local media isn't always the best source for military related information as a) most reporters couldn't tell the difference between a PAC-3 and Pacman, and b) the media has a long history of sensationalizing pretty much everything.

The exercise was conducted using JTLS (the Joint Theater Level Simulation) provided by the US over a period of 5 days. The "Blue team" (defenders) were led by general officers from the ROC military, while the "Red team" (the PLA) was controlled by professors from the National Defense University. US military intervention was not included in the simulation. A U.S. advisory group under former PACOM commander Adm. Dennis Blair observed the exercise but did not otherwise participate. Notably, this was also one of the first exercises to take the effect of psyops and the reactions of the civilian populance into account. A "news channel" was reportedly created for the purpose of the exercise both for realism and to see the effect misiformation would have on the participants.

[Taiwan] [Taiwan Blogs]