Taiwan mechanized battalion ends 10-day unscripted combat test that cut its command links

A Taiwanese army mechanized battalion has completed a 10-day, nine-night base tactical evaluation in which instructors fed it unscripted enemy threats around the clock, cut its battalion and company command links and made troops treat wounded civilians, according to the Ministry of National Defense's Youth Daily News.

The 3rd Combined Arms Battalion of the 234th Mechanized Infantry Brigade finished the evaluation on Sunday, 11 October, at the army's southern testing centre, the paper reported on 12 October. It said the battalion passed the 10-day validation after completing the preparatory and tactical phases of the test.

In the closing phase, troops refuelled and inspected their vehicles inside their positions while under simulated threat. After receiving an order to relocate, they checked equipment, counted personnel, planned a march order and routes, and then drove CM11 tanks, CM34 infantry fighting vehicles and CM32 armoured command vehicles off the training ground while staying on alert.

Drones, casualties and live engagement scoring

Youth Daily News said instructors issued situations without warning throughout the test. The drills included rescuing injured civilians in a combat zone, responding to enemy drone reconnaissance and attack, limited-objective firing, and self-aid and buddy-aid under enemy fire. A live-engagement simulation system was used to score how much combat power the unit delivered and how much it lost.

The evaluation ran as a continuous 24-hour, no-script force-on-force exercise, the paper reported earlier. On its eighth day, during a defence-in-depth and sustained-combat phase, soldiers flew tactical short-range drones to search the area and feed battlefield updates to the command post, which then sent CM11 tanks forward to simulate suppressing enemy forces.

On the same day instructors announced simulated gunshot wounds to soldiers' arms and legs with heavy bleeding. Troops followed tactical combat casualty care procedures, applied and secured tourniquets within a set time limit, and carried the wounded to a protected area while keeping watch for enemy fire, according to the report.

Civilian resources and broken communications

Liberty Times highlighted two features that set this round apart from older base tests. The first was a drill on key civilian manpower, in which the battalion integrated civilian resources and local community leaders into its tactical planning. Youth Daily News said the aim was to strengthen military-civilian cooperation and build societal defence resilience.

The second was a sudden loss of command and communications at battalion and company level. The reports said the scenario was designed to test whether unit commanders could keep carrying out their missions independently when communications were blocked, and to sharpen junior officers' judgement of enemy action and their command decisions in a complex battlefield.

The reports did not publish the battalion's scores from the engagement simulation system or say how it performed in individual phases. They described the communications-outage and civilian-integration scenarios as part of the army's broader push to make base training more realistic and closer to actual combat.