In span In just a few short years, drones played a role in war. Conflicts in Ukraine, Iran, Nagorno-Karabakh, Sudan and elsewhere show how self-driving cars are typical of modern combat.
This is a fact that Taiwan knows very well. Island countries fear the impending invasion of China, with the need to establish a strong and advanced drone program, knowledge and industry.
However, Taiwan has set an ambitious goal to produce 180,000 drones per year by 2028, and he is working to create the industry from scratch. Last year, it generated less than 10,000.
“Taiwan has the absolute ability to make the best drones in the world,” said Cathy Fang, policy analyst at the Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET).
Then why not?
Design hell landscape
Fang and her colleagues published a lengthy report on June 16 revealing the development of Taiwan’s drone industry. According to their research, the country has produced between 8,000 and 10,000 driverless cars (UAVs) in the past year, with its “structural challenge” citing current speed and ambitious goals. Their research found that Taiwan’s drone production was plagued by “high manufacturing costs, low domestic procurement and minimal foreign government orders.”
Fang and other DSET researchers presented details of their report at the Taipei office in May.
Taiwan has lived under the threat of Chinese invasion for decades, but in recent years it has turned it into a more direct possibility. Beijing has made it clear that it intends to complete the active modernization of the People’s Liberation Army by 2027. Taiwanese officials say the invasion may be early, but it is almost certain that Prime Minister Xi Jinping will end before the end of his term in 2029.
Despite competing views on what form China’s military aggression might take, military analysts in Taiwan feared it could be a fierce attack by force: it started in the air and at sea, followed by a full-scale land invasion.
This means Taiwan must come up with innovative solutions to defend itself quickly. As one U.S. commander said in 2023, Taiwan’s self-defense will mean turning the Taiwan Strait into a “hell landscape,” i.e. Chinese ships and aircraft with future air and naval vehicles. This strategy does not require a complete destruction of the Chinese navy and air force, but it does need to frustrate Beijing’s progress in order to bring together Taiwan’s allies.
Taipei is already doing some rights. In 2022, the government launched the national drone team, a program designed to match government and industry to expand the scale of emerging fields. In particular, the team was dispatched to study courses from Ukraine, whose defensive strategy relies heavily on small, tactical, inexpensive drones that can perform multiple tasks and are closely integrated with ground units. Today, the country has a huge domestic drone industry, with Kiev planning to buy 4.5 million small drones this year, in addition to its long-range untrolled missile program, its automatic land vehicles and its untrolled naval drones.
