Flashpoints | Security | East Asia

Taiwan’s Urban Resilience Drills Are Becoming a Core Part of Deterrence

The Han Kuang drills are a useful step, but it should lead to more measurable questions for Taiwan’s ability to weather a crisis.

Taiwan’s Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (3rd from left in the background) visits an underground medical facility, as part of the Kaohsiung 2026 Urban Resilience Exercise, Aug. 7, 2026.

While deterrence is generally assessed in terms of ships, missiles, aircraft, and reservists, a Taiwan scenario will not be determined solely by such hardware. A coercive effort on the part of China could be designed to deliver a quicker political solution for Taiwan. Beijing may attempt to persuade the populace sufficiently that the Taiwanese government was incapable of protecting, informing, and supporting its citizens—all before China ever has to make an amphibious landing.

Yu-Hsuan Yeh, Bonny Lin, and Jane Nakano of the Center for Strategic and International Studies identified scenarios “short of an invasion of Taiwan” in which China could cut off energy or other key resources “via a quarantine or blockade.” Additionally, Beijing could attack Taiwan’s “power grid and energy infrastructure via cyber or kinetic means.” Disruption to power, logistics, and communications can constrain Taiwan’s ability to function before it defeats military forces outright.

The central issue, then, is not whether Taiwan can identify essential national assets — hospitals, ports, communication networks — but whether it can preserve their functions in a crisis scenario.

Taipei is increasingly preparing for this broader problem. Taiwan’s 2026 urban-resilience exercises further increased integration alongside the Han Kuang 42 exercise this year, after coinciding for the first time in 2025. Notably, 2026 marks another evolution for the Han Kaung exercises, this time bringing local government, hospitals, transport networks, emergency responders, critical infrastructure operators, and military forces into shared wartime scenarios. 

The 2026 drills tested evacuation and sheltering, traffic control, emergency response, civil–military coordination, and simulated mobile-network degradation in 14 central and northern jurisdictions. The Central News Agency reported that the format expanded from one day to two, used shared civilian-military scenarios, and tested cross-jurisdictional coordination. It also included underground medical operations, medical evacuation, joint transportation, and drone-enabled supply.

A Taiwan crisis would move through roads and ports, hospitals and pharmacies, electrical substations, and communications networks. At the heart of resilience are local emergency centers, which will decide which vehicles can move, which facilities receive power, and where people are directed to shelter. During the August 6-7 Kaohsiung-Pingtung urban resilience exercise, officials combined a tabletop exercise with practical drills on organizing evacuations, distributing essential goods, protecting critical infrastructure, and opening first-aid and relief stations. The city government conducted exercise activity in 12 administrative districts and at 10 critical infrastructure sites.

During the Kaohsiung practical exercise on August 7, I observed civilian and military personnel rehearse how backup power and alternate command procedures could support emergency supply distribution under disrupted conditions. The drill illustrated that resilience depends less on any single asset than on the ability of several institutions to coordinate actions quickly when normal systems fail.

At Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital, the exercise simulated medical load reduction to rehearse “sustaining medical care when critical infrastructure is damaged, disrupting, for example, water, electricity, or oxygen supplies.” The exercise also simulated converting f underground spaces into alternative medical functions via an activated backup command center. The drill opened underground acute-care beds, intensive-care capacity, and operating rooms, and simulated inpatient transfers and mass-casualty reception. The Military News Agency reported that the underground arrangement........

© The Diplomat