While America Fights Iran, Taiwan Fires U.S. Rockets Into the Strait for the First Time

On June 10, 2026, soldiers of Taiwan’s 10th Corps did something no Taiwanese unit had ever done: they fired U.S.-supplied HIMARS rockets into the waters of the Taiwan Strait — live rounds, in China’s direction, from the mobile launchers Ukraine made famous. The drill paired the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System with 155mm howitzers in what Reuters called a “shoot-and-scoot” anti-invasion rehearsal: fire, displace, survive the counter-battery, fire again.

It was the second straight day of live fire. On June 9, three domestically built Thunderbolt-2000 launchers at Dajia Beach in Taichung emptied 180 MK15 training rockets — 60 per launcher — in roughly 30 seconds, saturating the simulated landing zone an invasion fleet would have to cross. Taken together, the two days are the loudest signal Taipei has sent since the war in the Middle East began: the island is rehearsing the beach fight, with American weapons, while America is busy.

And here is the part the doom headlines miss: the Iran war has not opened an invasion window for Xi Jinping. U.S. intelligence assesses Beijing is not planning to execute an invasion, and the PLA’s tempo around Taiwan this week is actually low. What analysts do see is a quieter play — economic and cognitive pressure, aimed squarely at the liquefied natural gas lifeline Taiwan imports by sea, at the exact moment the Strait of Hormuz blockade has thrown the global LNG market into disarray.

• 180 rockets — fired in ~30 seconds by three Thunderbolt-2000 launchers at Dajia Beach, Taichung, June 9 — 60 MK15 training rockets each · Source: Focus Taiwan
• First ever — HIMARS live fire into Taiwan Strait waters, June 10 — by the army's 10th Corps, alongside 155mm howitzers, in a 'shoot-and-scoot' anti-invasion drill · Source: AP, NBC News, Reuters
• 217 incursions — PLA aircraft entered Taiwan's air defense identification zone in May 2026, up from 169 in April — including a May 26 spike of 24 median-line crossings · Source: AEI, Taiwan MND
• 82 HIMARS on hold — the follow-on sale from December's $11.1 billion package has reportedly been paused since the May Trump–Xi summit · Source: Reuters via U.S. News

The June 10 drill was built around the weapon’s core trick. HIMARS launchers rolled to firing positions, loosed their rockets toward designated boxes of Strait water, then displaced before any simulated Chinese counter-battery could find them — the “shoot-and-scoot” doctrine that kept Ukrainian launchers alive against Russian artillery for years. The 155mm howitzers fired alongside them. Taiwan ordered 29 HIMARS launchers from the United States and began receiving them in 2024; until this week, none had ever fired live rounds into the Strait itself.

The day before, the Thunderbolt-2000s gave the cameras the volume. The 58th Artillery Command’s launchers at Dajia Beach put 180 rockets into the air in about half a minute — the saturation barrage designed to shred landing craft in the surf zone. The drills unfold under President Lai Ching-te (DPP), whose government has pushed defense spending and asymmetric weapons hard, and Defense Minister Wellington Koo, who has spent the spring warning that the PLA’s pressure operations are designed to exhaust Taiwan’s response capacity. The soldiers firing the rockets were blunter about the threat than the ministers.

“Due to the current enemy threat, we will continue HIMARS training with unwavering determination to protect Taiwan as the nation's strongest force.”

Army Sgt. Wang Ming-hui · 10th Corps · June 10, 2026 (AP)

Keep Reading

World · El Salvador · Bukele Model

Zero Idleness: Inside the Prison State That Made El Salvador the Safest Country in the Hemisphere

Read →

The live fire is not happening in a vacuum. May 2026 was one of the heaviest months of Chinese military pressure on record: 217 PLA aircraft entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, per AEI’s tally of Taiwan Ministry of National Defense data, up from 169 in April. The spike came May 26, when 29 sorties flew around the island and 24 of them crossed the median line — the informal boundary down the middle of the Strait that Beijing now treats as imaginary. China Coast Guard vessels made four incursions into restricted waters near Kinmen in May, and a standoff around Pratas Island that began May 23 ran roughly 20 hours before the Chinese formation withdrew.

The pressure has reached third parties, too. On May 28, the PLA jammed the navigation and communications systems of the Dutch frigate HNLMS De Ruyter as it transited the Strait — electronic warfare against a NATO member’s warship in international waters. And all of it sits downstream of December’s “Justice Mission 2025” encirclement exercise, the largest PLA mobilization around Taiwan ever staged — which we covered in detail in our earlier reporting at Justice Mission 2025 and the May follow-on drills. The short version: the PLA has already rehearsed surrounding the island. Taiwan is now rehearsing what happens if the rehearsal ever goes live.

The obvious fear — America pinned down in the Persian Gulf, Xi seizes the moment — is not what the U.S. intelligence community sees. The 2026 Annual Threat Assessment, reported by CNN on March 19, concluded that Chinese leaders “do not currently plan to execute an invasion of Taiwan in 2027” but are “probably… seeking to set the conditions for eventual unification with Taiwan short of conflict.” A related CIA assessment, citing Xi’s sweeping purges of PLA leadership, judged that any invasion plan has effectively been set aside for roughly two years while the military’s command ranks are rebuilt.

The outside analysis lands in the same place. The Diplomat argued in April that for Beijing, the risks of triggering a wider conflict with “an already mobilized United States” outweigh any short-term advantage the Iran war offers. Time put the paradox even more sharply: the war “has distracted and depleted the U.S. military” but “may also — at least for now — have secured Taiwan’s de facto independence,” because an America already shooting is an America Beijing cannot assume will hesitate. None of which means the drills are theater. USINDOPACOM commander Adm. Samuel Paparo has repeatedly described the PLA’s encirclement exercises as “rehearsals, not drills” — and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (R)’s Pentagon is fighting a live war in one theater while trying to deter a second.

Keep Reading

World · Iran War

Twenty Targets in Three Waves: U.S. Strikes Iran's Hormuz Defenses. And Keeps Negotiating.

Read →

If the window for invasion is closed, the window for squeeze is wide open — and it runs through Taiwan’s fuel supply. Taiwan imports nearly all of its energy by sea, and liquefied natural gas is the soft spot: the island’s power grid leans on a steady conveyor of LNG tankers that an adversary does not have to sink, only delay. AEI’s June 5 update makes the connection explicit — with the Strait of Hormuz blockade disrupting the global LNG market, Beijing is positioned to exploit the scramble for cargoes to pressure Taiwan economically and psychologically, without firing a shot.

This is not a hypothetical Beijing stumbled into. The December “Justice Mission 2025” exercise explicitly rehearsed blockading Taiwan’s LNG terminals — the PLA practiced the exact chokehold that global market conditions are now tightening for free. That is the cognitive-warfare logic analysts keep pointing to: every ADIZ incursion, every coast guard probe at Kinmen, every jammed frigate tells Taiwanese voters and businesses that the island’s lifelines exist at Beijing’s sufferance. The HIMARS rounds splashing into the Strait are Taipei’s counter-message: the beaches are not undefended, and the launchers will not sit still to be found.

There is one more reason this week’s drills carry extra weight in Taipei: the weapons pipeline behind them has gone quiet. At the May 14 Beijing summit, Xi Jinping told President Donald Trump (R) that Taiwan is the non-negotiable center of the relationship — and Trump emerged telling reporters that China and Taiwan should “both cool it.” Since the summit, the follow-on sale of 82 additional HIMARS launchers — part of the $11.1 billion arms package announced in December 2025 — has reportedly been on hold. Taiwan is firing the launchers it has, in part, because nobody in Taipei is certain when the next ones arrive.

“Taiwan is the most important issue in China-U.S. relations… otherwise the two countries will have clashes and even conflicts.”

Xi Jinping to President Trump · Beijing summit · May 14, 2026 (NPR)

Honesty requires the deflating detail: as Taiwan’s rockets flew, the PLA’s tempo was low. Taiwan’s defense ministry logged 22 aircraft with just two median-line crossings in the June 5–6 reporting window, and a mere four aircraft on June 6–7 — among the quietest days of the year. No Chinese exercise is underway. Beijing did not surge jets in response to the HIMARS fire; it absorbed the headline and kept its powder dry. That restraint is itself consistent with the analysts’ read — a Beijing playing the long squeeze does not need to match every Taiwanese rocket with a show of force.

So the picture on June 10 is stranger than either alarm or complacency: the United States is fighting a war at one chokepoint while its most exposed partner rehearses for a war at another — with American rockets, under an American arms pause, against an adversary that U.S. intelligence says is not coming this year but is methodically rehearsing for the year it does. The first HIMARS rounds into the Strait will not change Xi’s calculus. They were never meant to. They were meant to tell Taiwan’s own public, and Washington, that the island intends to be a hard target whether or not the cavalry is busy. We will update this page as the drills — and the arms pipeline — develop.

More From Civic Intelligence

World · Iran War

Trump Says Iran Shot Down a U.S. Army Apache Over the Strait of Hormuz. He Vows the U.S. Will Respond.

President Trump (R) says Iran shot down a U.S. Army AH-64 Apache patrolling over the Strait of…

World · Italy–Israel

Italy Put a Sitting Israeli Minister Under Criminal Investigation Over the Sumud Flotilla.

Rome prosecutors placed Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (Otzma Yehudit) under…

Last updated June 10, 2026