Inside Taiwan’s 2026 Han Kuang War Games: Simulated Invasion, Internet Throttling, and NBC Drills

From August 5 to 14, 2026, Taiwan conducted its largest-ever annual Han Kuang military exercise—a 10-day, live-fire war game designed to test the island’s ability to repel a Chinese invasion . For the first time, the drills fully integrated civilian resilience measures, including a deliberate slowdown of mobile internet across a region home to roughly 16 million people . Here is a breakdown of every major component.

Simulated Chinese Air-and-Sea Assault on the Penghu Islands

On Monday, August 10, Taiwan’s military conducted multi-layered live-fire drills on the Penghu Islands, a strategically vital outpost in the Taiwan Strait. The exercise simulated repelling a Chinese air-landing (airborne) assault combined with a naval approach, testing the ability of Taiwan’s forces to detect, engage, and defeat a beachhead landing by PLA troops . Troops from the First Theatre Command opened fire in the pre-dawn hours using M60A3 tanks, artillery pieces, and anti-aircraft guns to create what the military called a “multi-layered” defense .

Unprecedented Mobile Internet Throttling for Civilian Resilience

Also on Monday, August 10, at 2:30 p.m. local time, Taiwan deliberately slowed mobile internet for the first time as part of a war game. Mobile data across seven central counties—Miaoli County, Taichung, Nantou County, Changhua County, Yunlin County, Chiayi County, and Chiayi City—was throttled to roughly 0.5–1 Mbps (about 1% of normal 5G speeds) for 30 minutes . Fixed-line services, landlines, emergency numbers, ATMs, and traffic signals were unaffected, and the Taiwan Stock Exchange received an exemption to avoid market disruption .

The drill simulated communications breakdowns from a Chinese attack or natural disaster, testing how citizens and businesses would function with severely limited bandwidth . A second throttle was scheduled for Thursday, August 13, covering seven jurisdictions in northern Taiwan as part of the broader urban resilience exercise S.

Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical (NBC) Decontamination Drill in Hualien

On Sunday, August 9 (Day 5 of the live-fire segment), the Army’s Chemical Group in Hualien County (eastern Taiwan) conducted a full-scale NBC decontamination drill . The scenario was designed around a chemical weapons attack on armored vehicles and personnel by the Hualien Armored Vehicle Unit of the Army’s Second Combat Zone . Notably, the drill assumed the enemy was already inside Taiwan’s defenses—Chinese intelligence operatives had penetrated multiple military positions and released toxic gases specifically to prevent armored units from moving north to reinforce Taiwan’s more exposed front lines . Troops practiced evacuating contaminated personnel and vehicles to recovery zones, establishing temporary decontamination stations, and restoring combat capability .

President Lai Ching-te’s Crisis Leadership and Anti-Decapitation Drill

On the first night of the exercises (Wednesday, August 5), President Lai Ching-te participated in a “Wan Chun” (anti-decapitation) contingency exercise. Wearing body armor and a helmet, he was rushed in a Clouded Leopard armored personnel carrier to a secure, underground command center (the National Political and Military Operations Command Center) to simulate how the government would continue functioning if a PLA decapitation strike targeted Taiwan’s leadership SS. On Saturday, August 8, Lai also oversaw coastal strike drills near Kaohsiung, boarding a fast-attack missile boat and observing low-flying attack drones simulating the repelling of a Chinese amphibious assault .

Broader Preparedness Push

Other notable components across the 10-day exercise included:

• Scrambling Mirage fighter jets in rapid turnaround drills at Hsinchu air base to demonstrate how the aircraft could be rapidly re-armed and sent back into the skies during any conflict .
• Testing relocatable arms production—moving weapons manufacturing lines and converting civilian factories for military use to sustain combat operations if Chinese attacks hit supply hubs .
• Civilian-military tank transport—using commercial flatbed trucks to move tanks overnight across eastern Taiwan to test logistics under wartime conditions, reinforcing defenses from Hualien to Yilan .
• Navy and coast guard escort drills for vital cargo and shipping lane security, rehearsing the protection of supply chains under fire .

Strategic Context: Beijing’s Position and China’s 2027 Readiness Goals

These exercises took place amid steadily escalating Chinese military pressure against Taiwan. Beijing rejects Taiwan’s self-governance and claims the island as its own territory, a position the AP noted in its coverage of the drills . The heightened urgency of the 2026 Han Kuang exercises is widely understood by analysts to be connected to China’s reported 2027 military readiness goals—a publicly discussed benchmark by which the PLA is expected to achieve the capability to conduct a large-scale invasion of Taiwan. While direct official statements about a “2027 deadline” are not found in the specific articles gathered here, major news outlets consistently report this timeline as the key driver behind Taiwan’s accelerated defense posture, including the unprecedented integration of civilian resilience drills into the military exercise for the first time this year S.