The Republic of China Army has deployed M60A3 principal battle tanks and infantry geared up with Javelin anti-tank missiles underneath the Penghu Defence Command for a “Frontier Protection Train” on April 10, which simulated an enemy amphibious assault. The live-fire workouts verified the coordinated defensive fight effectiveness of infantry, artillery, and mechanised models. Units geared up with Javelin missiles simulated the destruction of enemy armoured touchdown automobiles, strengthening coastal defence capabilities. Penghu is a key frontier island between Taiwan Island and the Chinese language mainland, with its strategic location making it more likely to be focused within the occasion of a brand new Taiwan Strait battle.
The Republic of China primarily based in Taipei and the Folks’s Republic of China primarily based in Beijing stay in a state of civil battle, with the latter fielding a a lot bigger and extra subtle floor power that has left the viability of the previous’s floor models in severe query. Whereas the Republic of China Army’s M60 tanks are thought of a long time previous obsolescence, the service depends notably closely on handheld anti-tank missile programs to asymmetrically counter superior adversary armour. The primary order for Javelin missiles to equip the Republic of China Army was positioned in 2002, with the missiles utilizing an electro optical infra-red sensor to supply a ‘hearth and neglect’ functionality. The system was designed to strike targets past line of sight, impacting on their prime armour.
The Javelin gained specific prominence for its utility within the Ukrainian theatre, the place in early-mid 2022 Ukrainian Army models used the missiles to nice impact to inflict excellent losses on Russian armour. Russia subsequently procured missiles with comparable capabilities from North Korea, nevertheless, which have additionally been used to nice impact within the theatre. The utility of a lot of these missiles has additionally been demonstrated each by the Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah when concentrating on Israeli positions at lengthy ranges, and by Israeli-backed anti-government militants in Iran which used them destroy various excessive worth targets in June 2025.
The Republic of China Army is without doubt one of the world’s final operators of the M60 tank, which first entered service in 1960, and even within the Nineteen Seventies and Nineteen Eighties was thought of comfortably outmatched by new generations of Soviet tanks such because the T-62 and T-72. The tank’s crew safety ranges are poor by twenty first century requirements, with efforts to handle this by integrating explosive reactive armour having failed. Dealing with the Republic of China Army’s tank models throughout the Taiwan Strait, the Chinese language Folks’s Liberation Army has launched a number of generations of overwhelmingly superior tanks into service. The brand new Kind 100 principal battle tank was revealed in September 2025 to be in energetic service, and has extensively been assessed to be essentially the most superior tank design on the earth.
