Will Taiwan’s decentralised military model raise more questions than it solves?

Taiwan’s military has stepped up training in decentralised command and control, aiming to ensure frontline units can operate independently in the event of a sudden attack from Beijing.

The shift comes as defence and intelligence officials warn lawmakers that mainland China has significantly expanded its ability to pivot from military exercises to actual combat.

This expansion raised the risk that a crisis in the Taiwan Strait could escalate with little warning and overwhelm traditional top-down command structures, according to a briefing provided to legislators on Wednesday.

In a written report to the legislature, the defence ministry said the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had steadily intensified multi-service and combat-oriented drills, moving away from episodic exercises towards routine, real-world operational training.

That evolution had narrowed Taiwan’s response window and heightened the risk of a sudden strike designed to paralyse command-and-control systems at the outset of a conflict, the ministry warned.

Under existing contingency plans, if Beijing were to announce large-scale or “composite” military operations around the Taiwan Strait, the island’s armed forces would activate a response centre, raise readiness levels and conduct immediate combat-readiness drills to prevent the PLA from “shifting from exercises to war”, it said.