US defense experts to participate in meetings, war games in Taiwan joint assessment program
By Huang Ching-hsuan and William Hetherington / Staff reporter, with staff writer
US defense liaisons are to take part in 130 meetings and map-based war games in Taiwan under an expanded joint assessment program, the Ministry of National Defense said in a report.
Sources have previously said that the Pentagon would station personnel at the ministry under a joint program that is to run from this year through 2028.
That program would involve officials from the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and researchers from the Institute for Defense Analyses, a US nonprofit research organization that conducts national security studies, the ministry report said.
The Pentagon building in Arlington, Virginia, is pictured on April 21, 2023.
Photo: Bloomberg
Each organization would assign one representative to work at the ministry’s headquarters in Taiwan.
The Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy advises US defense leaders on national security and defense policy, while the Institute for Defense Analyses conducts federally funded research and analysis on national security and science policy.
The ministry plans to hold 50 in-person meetings and 80 videoconferences this year under the program, which runs from this year through 2028, the report said.
The ministry has allocated funding for the initiative since 2022. Under the arrangement, the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy commissions the Institute for Defense Analyses to coordinate experts from the US military and research organizations, including the US Indo-Pacific Command, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Ground Intelligence Center.
The US liaisons work with the ministry, General Staff Headquarters and the armed services to assess defense and operational issues and provide policy recommendations.
Findings from the program’s first three years have been incorporated into the annual Han Kuang military exercises and training assessments conducted by each service, the ministry said.
Beginning this year, the US is expanding the scope and depth of the assessments and increasing their frequency, the report said.
The ministry said it has budgeted NT$471 million (US$14.82 million) over three years for the program. The NT$152.5 million allocated for next year would cover an expanded research team, the 130 meetings and the costs of stationing the two US liaisons in Taiwan.
The meetings would bring US experts together with Taiwan’s joint staff, service headquarters and frontline units for discussions, on-site inspections and map-based war games, as well as qualitative and quantitative assessments using simulation models, it said.
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.