Taiwan Shifts M110A2 203 mm Heavy Artillery to Shoot-and-Scoot Tactics Against Drone Threats.

Taiwan is reshaping how its heavy artillery fights under drone surveillance, with M110A2 203 mm and M109A2 self-propelled howitzers practicing rapid firing-position changes during live-fire training in Hsinchu on August 25, 2026. Taiwan’s Military News Agency said the drills addressed threats including hostile UAV reconnaissance, highlighting a shift toward keeping high-value guns mobile and survivable while sustaining fire support during an island defense.

The training combined live-fire readiness checks with rapid occupation and displacement, testing whether artillery crews can deliver heavy firepower before enemy sensors locate them for counter-battery strikes. For the aging but powerful M110A2, this approach preserves a 203 mm strike capability as a survivable layer of Taiwan’s defenses, reinforcing a broader move toward dispersed operations and reduced exposure in an increasingly transparent battlespace.

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Taiwan is sharpening M110A2 203 mm heavy-artillery tactics around rapid firing, displacement and survivability as hostile UAV reconnaissance increasingly threatens exposed gun positions (Picture Source: Taiwan’s Military News Agency)

On August 25, 2026, Taiwan’s Third Operational Zone conducted heavy-artillery maintenance and tactical live-fire training at the Kengzikou training area in Hsinchu, testing far more than the accuracy of its guns. M109A2 and M110A2 self-propelled howitzers joined 155 mm and 105 mm towed artillery in an exercise built around equipment readiness, rapid occupation of firing positions and immediate displacement after engagement. Taiwan’s Military News Agency said the training was specifically intended to strengthen artillery units against battlefield threats, including hostile UAV reconnaissance. In an increasingly transparent battlespace, the exercise offers a revealing picture of how Taiwan intends to preserve heavy firepower during a high-intensity defense of the island.

Heavy-Artillery Maintenance Fire Becomes a Combat-Readiness Test

The exercise was divided into heavy-artillery maintenance firing and tactical firing, a distinction that is operationally important. The maintenance-firing phase involved the 21st Artillery Command, 269th Combined Arms Brigade, 206th Infantry Brigade, 109th Infantry Brigade and Lanyang Area Command, using live ammunition to verify equipment serviceability, crew firing procedures, fire coordination and training proficiency. Rather than being understood simply as mechanical maintenance, the activity represented a live-fire validation of whether guns, crews and supporting procedures could collectively generate combat power when required. That is particularly significant for older systems. Taiwan’s Army has previously highlighted depot-level repair and overhaul of the M110A2 as contributing directly to field-artillery readiness, demonstrating that sustaining legacy platforms remains part of the force’s wider combat-readiness architecture. In a prolonged conflict, maintenance capacity becomes combat power: a heavy artillery piece that can repeatedly return to service gives commanders additional fire-support options even after newer systems begin suffering attrition.

The centerpiece of that equation is the M110A2 203 mm self-propelled howitzer, a Cold War system that appears technologically distant from the precision-strike assets now entering Taiwanese service but retains a distinctive battlefield effect. The original M110 entered U.S. Army service in 1963, while the M110A2 appeared in the late 1970s with a longer 203 mm weapon and double-baffle muzzle brake; U.S. Army technical material places its maximum range at approximately 29 kilometers with appropriate extended-range ammunition. The platform's real attraction is not a high rate of fire but the high-mass explosive effect delivered by a 203 mm projectile. Its limitations are substantial: limited crew protection, comparatively slow firing procedures, a significant ammunition and support footprint, older fire-control arrangements and a large physical and firing signature. Yet those weaknesses do not automatically render the weapon irrelevant. Against area targets, fortified positions, troop concentrations, logistical elements or landing-force support assets inside its engagement envelope, a serviceable 203 mm system can still impose a destructive conventional effect. The paradox of the M110A2 is central to its continuing relevance: the platform is technologically old, but the physical effect produced by heavy artillery has not become obsolete.

Fire, Displace, Survive: Taiwan Compresses the Counter-Fire Window

The most important element of the August 25 exercise was consequently not the firing itself, but what happened immediately before and after it. Taiwan’s Military News Agency reported that participating units moved from tactical positions within their operational areas to Kengzikou, completed position occupation and firing preparations within a limited period, unleashed their firepower and then immediately recovered their equipment and changed positions. The Ministry explicitly linked these procedures to improving the force's response to battlefield threats such as enemy UAV reconnaissance. In tactical terms, Taiwan is training its artillery to reduce sensor-to-shooter vulnerability. Once a firing battery is detected by a UAV, counter-battery radar, electronic-surveillance system or another intelligence sensor, the opposing force can attempt to convert that detection into coordinates and subsequently into a strike mission. Every minute removed from position occupation, firing and displacement reduces the window in which a gun position remains targetable. The artillery battle becomes a race between two cycles: Taiwan's ability to shoot and displace, and the adversary's ability to detect, identify, target and engage.

That requirement is particularly unforgiving for the M110A2. The system was designed in an era before persistent drones, loitering munitions and digitized battlefield surveillance made artillery positions continuously vulnerable from above. Taiwan cannot employ it according to Cold War assumptions and expect it to survive a contemporary counter-battery environment. Its protection must instead come increasingly from dispersion, terrain masking, camouflage, emissions discipline, pre-surveyed alternative positions, shortened occupation times, deception and immediate tactical displacement. This is what gives the August exercise greater significance than a routine artillery shoot: the weaknesses of the M110A2 effectively dictate its modern doctrine of employment. The gun does not need to absorb enemy counter-fire; it needs to prevent that counter-fire from arriving on a position it still occupies. Its age makes tactical discipline more important, not less. A legacy battery able to emerge from concealment, complete a fire mission and relocate before an adversary closes its kill chain can remain relevant even in a battlespace dominated by far more sophisticated sensors.

Old Guns Inside Taiwan’s Emerging Networked Fires Architecture

The geography gives this training additional strategic weight. Taiwan officially defines the northern Third Operational Zone as covering Yilan, Keelung, Taipei, New Taipei, Taoyuan, Hsinchu City and Hsinchu County. This places the formation across Taiwan's northern strategic core, where the defense of political, military, transportation and economic infrastructure would intersect with coastal defense, counter-landing operations and protection of rear-area sustainment networks. More importantly, the August 25 firing was not an isolated example of Third Operational Zone training. During Han Kuang 42 on August 7, Thunderbolt-2000 multiple-launch rocket units practiced rapidly moving into firing positions, completing preparations and conducting area fire in support of a simulated counter-landing operation. On August 12, the same operational zone rehearsed ammunition resupply by UH-60M helicopter under a scenario in which roads had been severed and ground logistics constrained. Viewed together, these drills suggest an increasingly coherent operational requirement: fires must move before they are located, strike rapidly once positioned, and remain sustainable even when conventional supply routes have been disrupted. That combination of mobility, firepower and distributed logistics could prove more decisive than the characteristics of any individual gun.

Taiwan is simultaneously preparing to introduce systems that operate at a very different technological level. In May 2026, Defense Minister Wellington Koo said the planned M109A7 procurement program would run from 2026 to 2032, with the new self-propelled howitzer offering GPS-based positioning, automated fire control, digital command-and-control and precision fires beyond 30 kilometers. Taiwan is also expanding HIMARS while developing a wider architecture incorporating surveillance and attack UAVs, AI-supported decision-making, the Team Awareness Kit and the Taiwan Tactical Network to accelerate its sensor-to-shooter cycle. The Ministry has specifically described HIMARS and M109A7 as operational-level precision-fire assets supporting counter-landing and homeland-defense missions. The relevant comparison is not M110A2 versus HIMARS or M109A7, but M110A2 alongside them. Modern systems can increasingly handle responsive, precision and longer-range engagements, while surviving 203 mm batteries can preserve another layer of conventional firepower, depth and redundancy. A sophisticated sensor network does not require every weapon at the end of the kill chain to belong to the same technological generation. If accurate targeting information, command decisions and firing orders can reach an available legacy battery quickly enough, that battery can still generate a militarily useful effect.

Taiwan’s August 25 artillery exercise demonstrates how the island is adapting both modern and legacy firepower for a battlefield increasingly shaped by persistent surveillance, rapid targeting and counter-battery threats. For the M110A2, continued relevance will depend less on its age than on disciplined maintenance, rapid firing preparation, concealment, dispersion and immediate displacement after engagement. Combined with Thunderbolt-2000 rocket artillery, HIMARS, future M109A7 systems and increasingly resilient logistics, the 203 mm howitzer can still provide valuable heavy conventional firepower within a layered defensive architecture. An M110A2 battery that can occupy a concealed position, deliver its rounds and relocate before an adversary completes its sensor-to-shooter cycle remains a credible battlefield threat, forcing attacking forces to devote reconnaissance, counter-battery and strike assets to locating and suppressing it while Taiwan preserves additional combat power for the wider defense of the island.

Written by Teoman S. Nicanci – Defense Analyst, Army Recognition Group

Teoman S. Nicanci holds degrees in Political Science, Comparative and International Politics, and International Relations and Diplomacy from leading Belgian universities, with research focused on Russian strategic behavior, defense technology, and modern warfare. He is a defense analyst at Army Recognition, specializing in the global defense industry, military armament, and emerging defense technologies.

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