During this precision medicine shooting exercise, the Coast Guard's Cijin ship fired a Xiongfeng III missile and accurately hit the target ship. Afterwards, the coast patrol officers and soldiers raised brooms to represent sweeping away enemy forces. (Photo: Provided by Military News Agency)
[Reporter Luo Tianbin/Reporting from Taipei] In the "115-year Tri-Service Joint Precision Missile Shooting" exercise that just concluded last week, the Navy and the Coast Guard jointly fired two Hsiung Feng III and one Hsiung Feng II anti-ship missiles, accurately hitting the retired Lanyang warship serving as the target ship, demonstrating strong sea control firepower. However, many military fans have also begun to wonder. The Chinese Academy of Sciences has worked hard overtime in the past five years to accelerate the production of more than 1,000 Xiongfeng series missiles. How many missiles have actually been launched by the National Army and the Coast Guard in the past five years? Based on public data from previous years of training, the answer is actually quite precise. Only about 15 to 25 missiles were fired in 5 years.
Many people may find it strange that since their home ammunition depots are already filled with thousands of anti-ship missiles, why don't they fire a few more in annual exercises? Wouldn't this be a better way to test the reliability and effectiveness of the weapon system? Senior military officials bluntly stated that precision missiles are a highly classified military secret within the national military system. The exact number of firings in each year is not disclosed in order to prevent the Communist military from using consumption rates to estimate the life span and effectiveness of Taiwan's missiles. The more realistic reason is that the cost of each Hsiung Feng missile is tens of millions of Taiwan dollars, which is taxpayers' hard-earned money. If it is consumed blindly just to join in the fun and watch the fireworks during the exercise, it will in vain weaken the real combat readiness inventory, which is not in line with the national defense principle of diligence and thrift.
In fact, each of the 15 to 25 shooting records in the past five years has a key test mission. For example, the 600-ton Anping-class frigate of the Coast Guard has launched a major verification of the "peacetime and wartime transition" of coast patrol since its first live-fired Xionger missile in the Hanguang 38 exercise in 2022. Today in 2026, the Coast Guard has not only participated in precision missile shooting for two consecutive years, but also in the just-concluded training exercise, the Qijin ship acted as the supersonic Xiongsan missile. This "few but fine" launch arrangement in the exercise is mainly to verify whether the motor vehicle crew of the Navy's Haifeng Group, Tuojiang-class warships and coast guard ships can successfully decentralize control through communication links and complete multiple waves of saturation attacks during wartime.
The three-day joint precision ammunition shooting exercise between the National Army and the Coast Guard has ended. At least 10 types of missiles and multiple attack drones have completed the shooting mission. However, the military has not released any information about the extended range of Xiongsan missile shooting this time. The picture shows that when the Navy released the video of the Hanguang exercise last September, the huge figure of the extended-range Xiongsan missile and the mobile launcher crew suddenly appeared. (Picture: Taken from the Hanguang drill video released by the Navy)
Since the exercise is so economical, how can Taiwan ensure that the more than 1,000 missiles in its inventory can be used at any time and will not expire? This is due to the "re-examination mechanism" established by the Chinese Academy of Sciences based on the practices of the US military. With the rapid advancement of Taiwan's defense technology and computer simulation technology, there is no need to actually launch missiles. Technicians can ensure that these thousands of "Taiwan Strait Hedgehogs" are ready for combat at any time as long as they regularly dismantle the inventory of missiles, use instruments to test chip performance, and regularly replace the solid propellant and target-finding components that have expired. This method of replacing live ammunition consumption with scientific re-examination can not only save a large budget, but also perfectly maintain the actual combat effectiveness of the troops.
As the special budget for improving naval and air combat capabilities is about to come to an end at the end of 2026, these thousands of Xiongfeng missiles, which were produced within five years, have been deployed in batches on mobile squadrons of the Littoral Combat Group and main naval ships across Taiwan. In the future, this huge group of anti-ship missiles will be combined with the newly purchased 400 US-made shore-based Harpoon missiles, and together they will be handed over to the "Littoral Combat Command" for unified dispatch. Through sophisticated scientific re-examination at ordinary times, the Chinese military maintains the highest accuracy rate of thousands of anti-ship missiles. During live-fire exercises, it only needs a few live-fire verified control links to weave a sea control saturation strike network that the Communist army cannot cross, truly fulfilling its security commitment to protecting the Taiwan Strait.
