Forces from the United States, the Philippines, and Japan used a mock-up of the Chinese ZBD-05 vehicle as a target during a live-fire training exercise in Laoag, Luzon, in the Philippines.
According to Defence Blog, the Shoulder to Shoulder exercise brought together approximately 800 personnel from the United States, the Philippines, and Japan for combined amphibious denial training on the coast north of Luzon.
Around 40 members of Japan’s Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade, a specialized island defense unit based in Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture, participated alongside U.S. and Philippine forces, firing rifles, recoilless rifles, and mortars at targets that included unmanned boats configured to simulate an amphibious assault force.
The ZBD-05 used as the primary mock target is the main tracked amphibious infantry fighting vehicle of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), specifically designed for the beach-landing phase of an amphibious assault. It is intended to rapidly deliver armored firepower onto the beach to suppress defenders before follow-on forces arrive.
China has conducted numerous large-scale amphibious exercises in recent years, in which the ZBD-05 and its amphibious tank variant ZTD-05 play central roles in the initial assault wave, reflecting how the PLA has structured the first phase of any Taiwan invasion scenario around rapid beach landings supported by firepower.
With this in mind, the fact that U.S., Philippine, and Japanese forces selected a mock-up of this specific vehicle as a live-fire target was not accidental, but rather a message about what they are preparing to face.
At the same time, the use of rifles and recoilless mortars alongside small arms in the live-fire component also reflects a practical emphasis on the types of weapons that island defense forces would realistically have available in the early stages of an amphibious denial mission.
For this reason, training specifically against the silhouette of the Chinese amphibious vehicle ZBD-05 ensures that when soldiers from all three countries encounter this vehicle in a real scenario, they will already have practiced engaging it.
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