Taiwan’s Army has crossed a symbolic and operational threshold: on June 10, 2026, it conducted its first-ever live-fire exercise with US-supplied HIMARS launchers on the island’s western shoreline, sending rockets directly into the Taiwan Strait from Taichung. Every previous HIMARS firing — including the system’s Taiwan debut in 2025 — took place on the Pacific-facing east coast, safely pointed away from the mainland. This time, the precision rockets flew toward China.