On Wednesday, Taiwan staged its first-ever military drill at its largest Airport, briefly halting commercial traffic as soldiers practised defending the facility against a simulated attack by China.

The anti-aircraft landing drill at the self-ruled island’s main Taoyuan International Airport near Taipei was part of Taiwan’s annual and biggest live-fire drills of the kind. The drills, called Han Kuang (Han Glory) exercises, began earlier in the week on Monday as China ramps up military and political pressures on the island.

They also focused on protecting Taiwan’s infrastructure and striking enemy ships to keep key waterways open.

This is the first such drill held at Taiwan’s biggest airport near the capital since it opened in 1979.

According to Taiwan’s Defense Ministry, six helicopters, including Apache attack helicopters, and 180 soldiers were part of the mock drills at the airport. They were meant to repel an attack by an enemy force that had taken over air traffic control facilities at the airport, the ministry said.

Soldiers were seen carrying rifles and running on the runway to fight against enemy forces that had landed via helicopters.

President Tsai Ing-wen, overseeing a separate drill at an oil refinery in Taoyuan, said “We must continue to boost Taiwan’s resilience to disasters so that when facing threats, we can recover fast and minimize the impact of operation outages.”

“The protection of the oil refinery was incorporated into this Han Kuang exercise to simulate possible attacks or disasters to establish comprehensive contingency measures, and effectively protect our critical infrastructure,” Tsai said.

China considers the self-ruled territory of Taiwan as its own and has vowed to bring it under its control in the future, using force if necessary. For the past three years, China has stepped up military pressure against Taiwan and has regularly held military missions around the island.