Chinese state television has released footage from the eastern seaboard showing ground-to-air missile units maintaining weapons in a continuous, upright launch posture, a practice presented as part of a sustained, high-readiness deterrent along the Taiwan Strait. The report frames the posture as urgent and purposeful: missiles standing at the ready, crews living in austere conditions and cycling repeatedly through high-alert drills to shave precious seconds from a potential response timeline.
The film follows an air-defence missile unit assigned to the Eastern Theater Command, portraying soldiers as “on the wheels” — constantly mobile and prepared to execute rapid launches. Sandbags on roofs, wind-bent trees and bare bunks underline a narrative of hardship and discipline. Sudden alarms and multi-hour simulated launches punctuate the footage, reinforcing the message that the force trains under a persistent expectation of combat.
The broadcast also explains the operational logic: keeping missiles erect removes the time otherwise needed to raise launchers into firing position, and therefore reduces the interval between order and impact. The piece stresses that in modern strikes, seconds matter — citing a figure for cruise-missile speeds to convey how small time savings can matter tactically. This technical detail is used to justify what the program presents as a continuous, resource-intensive posture.
The timing and tone of the programme are explicit in political terms. State messaging casts the measures as a deterrent against “Taiwan independence” and as a rebuttal to Taipei’s recent drills and equipment moves, including attention to systems such as HIMARS-type rocket artillery. By broadcasting these scenes, Beijing aims both to reassure domestic audiences of the People’s Liberation Army’s readiness and to warn Taipei and outside supporters that attempts to alter the status quo will meet a swift response.
Maintaining missiles in a permanent launch-ready configuration has operational trade-offs. Faster reaction times and a visible deterrent effect come at the cost of heightened wear on equipment, demanding logistics, increased maintenance burdens and potential safety risks. It also creates concentrated targets; a posture that prioritises immediate launch capability can become more vulnerable to pre-emption and intensifies the risk that a false alarm could spiral into a real exchange.
For outside observers, the footage is a reminder that cross-strait tensions continue to be managed as much through display and signalling as through capability. The combination of routine high-alert drills, publicised readiness, and pointed commentary about reunification adds to a pattern in which both Beijing and Taipei — and their external backers — undertake measures that can lower the threshold for miscalculation. Monitoring force posture changes, incident rates, and diplomatic messaging in the coming months will be critical to understanding whether this phase of deterrence stabilises the situation or raises the chances of crisis.