Taiwan's defence ministry tells lawmakers military needs come first in any Songshan or Taichung airport change

Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense has told the legislature that any change to how the country's shared civil-military airports are used must put national defence resilience and military missions first, in a written report delivered on Wednesday, 14 October 2026, the Liberty Times reported. The report was prepared for a special session of the Legislative Yuan's Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee on relocating Taipei Songshan Airport and expanding Taichung Airport, where Defence Minister Wellington Koo and Transport Minister Chen Shih-kai were invited to brief lawmakers and take questions.

The ministry described airports as key infrastructure for air transport, military missions, emergency rescue and supply runs. It said Songshan, a joint-use airport in the heart of the capital, carries out regional military protection, civil aviation and disaster response coordination, while Taichung, also shared, handles air defence security alongside international and domestic flights for central Taiwan. Both, it said, matter in normal operations.

A network, not a single base

The report set out how Taiwan's military and civilian airfields are spread across the north, centre, south, east and outlying islands to form a zoned aviation system whose parts can back each other up. It named Songshan, Taichung, Chiayi, Tainan, Hualien and Penghu as airports that serve both airlines and military flying. Depending on location, runway and taxiway facilities and regional tasks, each supports military flights, airlift, combat readiness and contingency missions, the ministry said, and the layout's division of labour, mutual support and dispersed use underpins the armed forces' air missions and overall air defence resilience.

Decisions to keep, close or adjust a military airfield must also take in the surrounding military facilities that support wider operations, the ministry wrote, and must weigh how well the armed forces could still be supported during national security threats, major accidents and natural disasters. It said ministries should review the military missions, facility needs and operating conditions tied to Songshan and Taichung, and that any relocation or expansion should rest on national air transport demand, defence security, flight safety, balanced regional development and fiscal return. The ministry pledged to offer professional advice under three principles: national-level planning, no harm to defence missions, and balancing military and civilian needs.

Election backdrop

Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an, who is seeking re-election in November, proposed on 8 October to move the airport and use about 300 hectares of freed land for an artificial intelligence industrial park, housing, public facilities and a large park. Kuomintang legislator Hsu Chiao-hsin, elected committee convener the same day, added the session to the agenda at noon on 12 October, which the Liberty Times said left ministries little time to file written reports. Puma Shen, a committee member and the Democratic Progressive Party's Taipei mayoral candidate, said the health ministry and outlying-island officials should also be heard because Songshan handles medical evacuation and island flights.

Koo said on 12 October that he would not state whether he backed the move, only that overall defence capability must not be affected, the United Daily News reported. Deputy Interior Minister Ma Shih-yuan said the National Airborne Service Corps keeps a base at Songshan that his ministry could not give up, according to the China Times, while the Taiwan People's Party caucus said it supported the idea in principle. The transport ministry said on 8 October that Chiang's plan had never been discussed with the central government, and that Songshan hosts air force deployments and the airborne service corps as well as routes to outlying islands, eastern Taiwan, Tokyo Haneda, Seoul and Shanghai, Newtalk reported. Chiang has said the move could be completed by 2033, once Taoyuan airport's third terminal and third runway open.