Taiwan Breaks Ground on a Drone Centre and Courts Democratic Allies
Lai Ching-te told a groundbreaking ceremony in Chiayi that the island must build its drone industry with partners rather than alone. “From the Ukrainian battlefield to Indo-Pacific regional security, unmanned systems have become important combat strength in modern defence,” he said, calling for “a safer and more resilient unmanned aircraft supply chain”. The cabinet has proposed an extra T$145.7bn, about $4.59bn, in defence spending this year.
The shopping list tells you what kind of war Taipei now expects to fight: more than 600 coastal surveillance and reconnaissance drones, more than 40,000 coastal attack drones, and a first batch of over 100 small suicide drone boats. That is the Ukrainian lesson applied to a strait — cheap, numerous and expendable, rather than few and expensive. The supply-chain line is the diplomatic half of it, since drone components are dominated by Chinese manufacturing and building an alternative is a collective problem rather than an island one. The pressure it is responding to is routine and constant: Taiwan’s defence ministry logged three Chinese military aircraft, five navy vessels and four official ships around the island in the twenty-four hours to six o’clock this morning, with one sortie crossing the median line. Watch whether allies actually join the supply chain.