\n While the US-supplied system known as HIMARS has been tested before, the latest live-fire exercise was the first time its rockets were fired into the waters of the narrow Taiwan Strait that separates the self-governing island from China.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cDue to the current enemy threat, we will continue HIMARS training with unwavering determination to protect Taiwan as the nation\u2019s strongest force,\u201d army Sgt. Wang Ming-hui said.\n <\/p>\n
\n The military said it used reduced-range practice rockets that don\u2019t fly very far from the coast before falling into the water.\n <\/p>\n
\n China views Taiwan as a renegade province and says it must come under its control at some point in the future. It sends warships and planes<\/a> into the skies and waters near the island almost every day<\/a> and has held major military exercises in its vicinity in recent years. The United States does not recognize Taiwan as a country, but it opposes any change to its status by force and is its main supplier of weaponry for its defense.\n <\/p>\n \n The HIMARS, which stands for High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, is part of a US-encouraged shift in strategy, toward an asymmetric approach designed to keep China at bay rather than trying to go head-to-head with big-ticket weapons purchases. The truck-mounted pod of rockets can be driven out from a hidden position to fire its missiles, then quickly taken to a new hiding place in what are called shoot-and-scoot tactics.\n <\/p>\n \n They were fired on the second day of exercises on Taiwan\u2019s west coast, which faces China. The drills, which also included 155 mm howitzers, simulated a response to a Chinese invasion and were designed to test rapid deployment and precision-strike capabilities.\n <\/p>\n \n The HIMARS was the centerpiece of the drill. After receiving a firing order, the vehicles maneuvered into position and launched their rockets with bright flashes within three minutes, demonstrating their mobility.\n <\/p>\n \n The US announced plans<\/a> in December to sell 82 more HIMARS systems to Taiwan as part of a major arms deal, but that package appears to have been put on hold after President Donald Trump met Chinese leader Xi Jinping<\/a> in Beijing last month.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Taichung, TaiwanAP\u00a0\u2014\u00a0 Taiwan\u2019s military fired rockets in China\u2019s direction from \u201cshoot-and-scoot\u201d mobile launchers on Wednesday in a demonstration…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":728345,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[49,48,66,306],"class_list":["post-728344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=728344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/728345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=728344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=728344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/ap26161169647611.jpg\")
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