Taiwan's army drops stand-alone bridge blasts from 2027 training, saying it has the data it needs

Taiwan's army will stop staging stand-alone live bridge demolitions from next year, after engineer units in all four operational areas on the main island have each blown up a real bridge in 2026. Army Commander General Lu Kun-hsiu announced the change on 11 November, saying every operational area had now collected the blasting data it needed and the goal for this stage had been reached, so training plans would be adjusted, according to the Liberty Times and the military's Youth Daily News.

The decision makes the demolition of the Touqian River Bridge in the Baihe district of Tainan the last such job carried out by army engineers in this phase. The 54th Engineer Group of the 8th Army Corps was scheduled to bring down the bridge at 9:30 a.m. local time on 12 November, and the Liberty Times said no similar demolition missions are expected for several years.

The Tainan blast was the fourth of the year. It followed the Shanjin Bridge in Yunlin on 25 March, the Xizhou No. 3 Bridge in Yilan on 22 September and the Mingli Bridge in Hualien on 20 October, according to the Taiwan Security Monitor at George Mason University. The Tainan job was timed to fit the city government's own plan to rebuild the bridge.

Lieutenant General Liu Wei-hsin, commander of the Fourth Operational Area, visited the site on 9 November to review the blasting plan, the work procedures and the safety controls, the Liberty Times reported. He said that turning a local reconstruction project into a training ground let troops test their skills in a real setting, and that data recorded on site and reviewed after the blast would improve the army's ability to cut key routes and hold back an advancing enemy in wartime.

Lu made his announcement while visiting a combat engineer battalion of the 52nd Engineer Group in central Taiwan, accompanied by the commander of the 10th Army Corps and senior army staff officers. He praised the unit for its bridge demolition training and for its recruiting and retention work, and urged officers to study the chief of the general staff's guidance on joint defence operations and to think about how each branch would be used in every phase of the defence of Taiwan and Penghu, Youth Daily News reported.

Lu described this year's bridge blasts as a clear example of what he calls realistic, combat-oriented training, which he said means leaving the framework of theory and checking it through real practice. He told officers to turn the parameters gathered this year into a basis for how engineer units are used tactically and for meeting operational requirements.

At a drone training ground, Lu also ordered that drones be fully integrated into every stage of engineer training, from garrison and specialist courses to branch base training, so that the technology is combined with engineering skills to raise combat power and the troops' chances of surviving on the battlefield. With base training coming up, he told commanders to put training safety and discipline first.

Ending the one-off demolitions does not mean dropping the mission. The army's stated aim is to feed this year's results into engineer tactics, rather than to keep repeating single blasts, Youth Daily News reported.