Three sea drones skimmed across Su’ao Bay off Taiwan’s rugged northeast coast on a bright morning last month.
The tiny “stealth” Carbon Voyager 1, fast-moving Black Tide I, and explosives-carrying Sea Shark 800 were the highlight of an expo for companies vying to help Taiwan build up a maritime drone force.
In the event that Beijing’s forces attempt to invade the self-ruled island, which Beijing has threatened to annex with force, drones could be crucial in repelling China.
Su’ao is just 60km (37 miles) from Fulong, one of the so-called “red beaches” identified by defence experts as potential landing sites for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) due to their unique topography.
Whereas Russia sent tanks across land borders to launch its war on Ukraine in 2022, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would involve Beijing sending vessels across the 180-km- (112-mile-) wide Taiwan Strait.
While the Taiwan Strait’s choppy waters and Taiwan’s mountainous geography and shallow beaches pose formidable challenges to an amphibious invasion, technological advances and a decades-long modernisation campaign by the PLA have steadily chipped away at the island’s natural defences.
Taiwan’s defense strategy has steadily changed in response to a significantly larger and more powerful adversary, making an invasion too costly for Beijing to take into account.
Drones, from sea craft to single-use suicide weapons and high-altitude intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) vehicles, are a key element of Taipei’s so-called “porcupine strategy”.
“It doesn’t mean that we need to build one drone for their one drone”, Chen Kuan-ting, a lawmaker from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party who sits on the legislature’s foreign affairs and defence committee, told Al Jazeera.
Taiwan can maintain its advantage through “disruptive innovations,” Chen said.
“We have to encourage startups to find something cheaper and something that would fit the terrain of Taiwan. He claimed that this is advantageous for us.
Taiwan is no stranger to high-tech manufacturing.
The East Asian democracy is the world’s top chipmaker, thanks to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which produces about 90 percent of the most advanced semiconductors, but it also excels at making everything from wind turbines to screws and fasteners for the aerospace industry.
Taiwan’s government launched the “Drone National Team” initiative in 2022 to create a local drone industry capable of preventing a Chinese invasion and maintaining production during a wartime conflict.
While Taiwan’s defence sector has been developing drones since the 1990s, Taiwanese manufacturers have long struggled to compete with the low prices offered by Chinese manufacturers, particularly Shenzhen-based DJI, which holds a more than 70 percent share of the global market.
The use of drone warfare by Kyiv to outlast Moscow has only strengthened the belief in Taipei that unmanned vehicles could be the key to fending off its much larger military foe in the conflict in Ukraine.
Under Taipei’s drone strategy, the Ministry of National Defence and state-owned National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology, which organised June’s drone expo, are tasked with partnering with contractors to produce military-grade drones.
Under a parallel initiative, the Ministry of Economic Affairs is coordinating a program to help the private sector build and sell “dual-use” drones, which serve commercial as well as military purposes, for both the local and overseas markets.
William Lai Ching-te, president of Taiwan, has endorsed Taiwan’s designation as an “Asian hub” for drone manufacturing and technology.
For Taiwan, the bid to become a drone powerhouse is a race against time.
By 2027, according to US Indo-Pacific Command commander US Admiral Philip Davidson, who predicts the PLA will be able to invade Taiwan.
Despite the pressing need for a formidable drone force, Taiwan’s progress at building up its domestic industry has been uneven at best, experts say, with the problems beginning with overly modest targets that do not match the scale of the threat.
Taiwan has set a target for local industry to produce 15, 000 dual-use drones a month by 2028, while the Defence Ministry has ordered 700 military-grade unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and 3, 422 dual-use drones from local manufacturers, according to figures from the government-backed Research Institute for Democracy, Society, and Emerging Technology (DSET).
Additionally, Taiwan set a new goal of acquiring another 47, 000 drones over the next four years by ordering roughly 1, 000 UAVs from the US in 2024.
The newer procurement figures have yet to be accounted for in the national budget, which means they are subject to possible change.
Defense experts believe that despite the larger targets, the numbers, especially those of military-grade UAVs, are subpar in comparison to contemporary warfare.
During the opening volleys of a conflict with China, Taipei and Beijing would be expected to “churn through thousands of UAVs on a daily, if not hourly, basis”, according to an April report by the US Naval Institute.
The report estimated that Taiwan’s recent purchase of 291 Altius-600M UAVs, 685 Switchblade loitering munitions, and 4 MQ-9B drones – part of a $21bn backlog in military orders with the US government – would sustain just four to five volleys against the PLA.
Peter Mattis, president of the US-based Jamestown Foundation, stated at a DSET summit on supply chain resilience in Taipei last month that Taiwan needed to think more deeply about how to meet its training and stockpile requirements.
“Maybe it’s appropriate to be thinking about hundreds]of drones] while you’re trying to test things out, but we need to be burning through those, running them through their paces, so that we know when we do scale … we’re actually getting something that can stand the test”, Mattis said.
The Kyiv-based Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies’ Asia Pacific section director Yurii Poita noted that Ukraine intends to produce 200, 000 tons of ammunition each month by 2025, which is “the same volume as Taiwan wants to [produce] over the course of one year.
Ukrainian brigades burn through 50 to 100 first-person view drones (FPV) – which give the pilot a real-time view of the battlefield – each day, Poita told Al Jazeera.
Taiwan needs to be prepared to pivot and adapt as it builds its arsenal, including by paying attention to developments in Russia and Ukraine, said Misha Lu, a drone expert at the Taiwanese startup Tron Future.
According to Lu, “drones have already evolved in Ukraine and Russia beyond the realm of reconnaissance and strikes.”
“In Taiwan’s case, military drone applications have not been so diverse yet.
Simply put, the Taiwanese military needs to move quickly to understand the importance of anti-drone technology in its training and planning for defense, Lu said.
Still, experts disagree about where exactly Taiwan should be placing its focus, given the wide variety of drone types and its limited resources.
While a lot of attention has been paid to stopping PLA from landing on Taiwan, there has not been enough discussion of what would happen next, said Lorenz Meier, the founder and CEO of the drone software company Auterion, who argues that Taipei’s drone strategy should take advantage of Taiwan’s unique geography.
The Central Mountain Range divides Taiwan into its parts, with the majority of its towns and cities on the west coast, which are mostly made of low-rise concrete structures built to withstand earthquakes.
About 60 percent of the island is covered in dense evergreen subtropical forest.
Right now, I’m in favor of pushing USV, and it also sends a message to China. This is important, “Meier told Al Jazeera on the sidelines of the Su’ao Bay drone expo, where Auterion signed a partnership with the NCSIST.
” But at the same time, there needs to be, eventually, conversation around the defence strategy, and the fact that we’re not talking about a realistic urban combat scenario shows that there is work to be done.
Meier continued, “I’ve never heard the government talk about using the hills in a significant way.”
“If you retreat a force into the jungle, and if you launch drones out of the hills, that is going to be hell to sit at the beach”.
According to Alexander Huang, the chairman of Taiwan’s Council on Strategic and Wargaming Studies and a Kuomintang ally, Taipei’s strategy has focused on developing an arsenal to the detriment of considering how to deploy it in a conflict.
“A smart way is for Taiwan to go is to review the specifics of the Taiwan contingency and Taiwan theatre and figure out the operational tempo of the People’s Liberation Army and come up with a kind of drone development strategy with Taiwanese characteristics, rather than just copying the Ukraine model or following the advice of the Pentagon”, Huang told Al Jazeera.
Taiwan’s Defence Ministry did not reply to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment.
According to Jason Wang, the COO of ingeniSPACE, a geospatial intelligence company with offices in Taiwan, some of Taipei’s shortsightedness is due to its lack of recent combat experience.
“Taiwan can produce any hardware that you could possibly imagine and do it cheaply. The hardware is not the key to modern warfare. It’s about putting the brains in the drones to give the warfighter options on the battlefield”, Wang told Al Jazeera.
“Understanding the role that different drones play on the battlefield, the logistics necessary to get them there, and the speed of violence necessary to stop your adversary is what Taiwanese manufacturers have a hard time mastering”, Wang added.
“Political will, not capability, determines how well a country will win on the battlefield.”
Taiwan has for decades dealt with Chinese aggression in the form of “grey-zone” tactics – low-grade activity occupying the space between peace and conflict – but has not fought a military battle with Beijing since the 1958 Taiwan Strait crisis.
Since the Communist Party’s (ROC) government lost the Chinese Civil War to communist forces in the 1940s, Taipei and Beijing have been at odds.
In 1949, ROC leader Chiang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan, an erstwhile Japanese colony, pledging to one day return to the mainland.
Taiwan is now recognized by just 11 nations, including the Holy See, after losing numerous allies during the Cold War, including the US in 1979.
Its diplomatic isolation means it cannot officially engage with neighbouring militaries or UN peacekeeping missions.
Without making any announcement, unofficial joint military exercises with Taiwan’s principal security guarantor, the US, were conducted to avert China’s anger.
For the same reason, while the US has pledged to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself, successive governments in Washington have stopped short of saying whether it would directly intervene in a conflict.
Taiwan’s military, a symbol of state repression during four decades of martial law that lasted until 1987, has undergone significant investment and modernisation in recent years.
According to Michael Hunzeker, an associate professor at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, the military underwent a period of neglect until the Democratic Progress Party’s election in 2016 in the wake of Taiwan’s transition to democracy in the early 1990s.
The DPP saw the military largely as a “tool of authoritarian oppression”, Hunzeker told Al Jazeera, while the opposition KMT did not want to build up military power because it was seeking rapprochement with Beijing.
Taiwan’s military spending dramatically increased under Tsai and Lai’s leadership.
In 2025, Taiwan’s cabinet allocated defence spending equal to 2.45 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) – up from spending equivalent to 1.82 percent of GDP in 2016 – a budget that was later scaled down by the opposition-controlled legislature.
Lai has said he ultimately wants to raise spending this year to 3 percent of GDP, though his plans face opposition from the KMT.
Taiwan’s forces are still dwarfed by China’s military, which is the largest in terms of personnel.
China’s military ranked 3rd in the 2025 Global Firepower Index, which measures the defence capabilities of global militaries, far ahead of Taiwan’s military at 22nd.
Regular large-scale military exercises in the Taiwan Strait, including drone drills, have been conducted by the PLA since 2022.
China does not have an embassy in Taipei, but its embassies in Washington, DC and Tokyo did not respond to requests for comment.
Taiwanese drone makers say that access to real-world and timely battlefield intelligence will be essential to designing the best drones for Taiwan and potential clients overseas.
Our biggest weakness is that we must adapt to the constantly changing conditions on the battlefield. We need to know the conditions to adapt software”, Gene Su, general manager of Taiwanese toymaker-turned-drone manufacturer Thunder Tiger, told Al Jazeera.
“We need to work with people on the front lines of Europe and in the US to ensure that we understand their needs before they adapt the software.”
Taiwanese manufacturers are also aware of the challenge they face from their commercial competitors.
China is skilled at both making drones and conducting “electronic warfare” capable of jamming enemy drones and misleading anti-drone systems, said Sunny Cheung, a Washington-based DSET fellow and analyst at the Jamestown Foundation.
According to Cheung, “all]drone makers [share the same concerns that the Chinese anti-drone and electronic warfare capabilities are very good, so they are unsure whether Taiwanese drones can infiltrate and conduct military operations in a real-time combat scenario,” according to Cheung, referring to an informal survey of CEOs at Taiwan’s largest commercial and military companies.
Taipei has been moving to address some of these potential vulnerabilities.
Wellington Koo, the first civilian to hold the position in a ten years, recently announced that the military would add UAVs and USVs to the navy in addition to its already existing one.
Observers such as the DSET say establishing a UAV/USV task force this year to “facilitate a more coordinated approach” to procurement, subsidies, budgeting, and research and development is another step in the right direction, but other logistical and economic challenges remain.
Much of Taiwan’s drone strategy depends on its companies finding overseas partners to help drive demand for drones and build up the supply chain.
Taiwanese businesses are currently collaborating with customers in Japan, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, and other countries who want to axe China from their supply chains.
For now, export figures remain low, although the industry is gaining momentum.
Taiwan exported 3, 473 drones in 2024, and 3, 426 drones in just the first quarter of 2025, from exporting just 290 in 2023.
The program’s Achilles heel, according to experts, may lie in supply chain bottlenecks and the financial risks facing would-be drone makers.
Some would-be drone makers fear a similar fate as US company Skydio, which was sanctioned by China in 2024 for selling drones to Taiwan, according to Hong-Lun Tiunn, a DSET non-resident fellow and co-author of the June report.
To help address their concerns, Tiunn and his DSET coworker Fang claimed that the government should provide manufacturers with more financial incentives.
“As a private company, their first priority is to make a profit”, Fang told AL Jazeera. Are they going to suffer the consequences of the Chinese government and lose all of their clients?
Chia-yu Chang, business development manager at Taiwanese drone designer Avilon Group, voiced similar concerns.
“It’s not just supporting drone companies, they need to support the entire ecosystem in order to have a Taiwanese drone brand. However, according to Chang, “I believe there are still many stages that need to be fixed.”
Chang said private companies are also struggling to completely remove China from their supply chains.
The majority of commercial businesses, or the majority of the industry, are concerned with data or security issues, but the military would prefer that the drone’s entire system have no Chinese components, she said.
“Honestly, nobody can do that”.
Many of the components and raw materials used to manufacture UAV batteries are dependent on China.
The island is similarly dependent on imports to meet its demand for GPS modules, flight control and positioning software, sensors, cameras, and secure communication chips, according to the DSET report.
Despite Taipei’s close ties to Washington, some technologies, like thermal imaging, are also subject to US export restrictions.
Often, these imports are more expensive than Chinese-made parts, even if they are from friendly countries, according to the DSET, with a single component like an SDR video transmission chip costing as much as 10 times the price offered by DJI.
In response to questions about its supply chain, the NCSIST said Taiwan is working towards self-sufficiency.
Due to Taiwan’s relatively late start in the development of the defense industry, key components like high-power engines, precision navigation systems, and advanced sensors still rely on foreign markets, according to the NCSIST.
“However, NCSIST is addressing this by developing critical indigenous technologies (eg, flight control computers, EO equipment, radar), gradually reducing reliance on foreign suppliers”, it said.
Taiwan needs to move quickly, observers claim as the years pass to 2027.
“This is our war. This is not somebody else’s war”, the KMT’s Huang said, adding that there is a “question mark” over whether Taiwan can implement an effective drone strategy.
Source: Aljazeera
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