Taipei and Washington are pushing for their drone companies to work together to establish a China-free supply chain, the Financial Times reported on Friday.
A delegation of high-level executives and US government officials were yesterday to arrive in Taipei to discuss with their Taiwanese counterparts collaboration on drone technology procurement and development, the report said.
The executives represent 26 US manufacturers of drone and counter-drone systems, while the officials are from the US Department of Commerce and the US Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit, along with Dev Shenoy, principal director for microelectronics in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, it said.
Photo: Sam Yeh, AFP
China’s dominance in the global drone industry has raised security concerns in the past few years, it said.
The collaboration between Taiwan and the US is part of a broader trend of de-risking supply chains by moving manufacturing away from China, and also highlights Taiwan’s critical role in global supply chains, the Financial Times said.
A key focus of the US delegation is to seek suppliers and manufacturing partners outside of China, it said.
The delegation is “an opportunity for us to become part of their supply chain” and coproduce products, the report quoted Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) as saying.
“As the US is putting such emphasis on removing China from supply chains and because drones can be dual-use products, a lot of other players will have to integrate their supply chains,” he said.
Other members of the delegation include executives from Dedrone, which supplies counter-drone systems, and defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp, which has announced plans to expand into the Taiwanese market, the report said.
Taiwan is home to many commercial drone firms, but they are much smaller in scale than their Chinese competitors, and they also focus on smaller machines, it said.
After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Taiwan has sought to build a national “drone team” to support the industry, it said.
Unlike previous partnerships that involved the Ministry of National Defense’s research arm, Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology, the ministry last month announced contracts for military-grade commercial drones totaling NT$6.8 billion (US$US212.75 million).
Taiwan UAV (智飛科技), the nation’s oldest private drone manufacturer, won a contract for more than NT$2.4 billion to supply land-based surveillance drones.
In other developments, the ministry yesterday confirmed that a recent promotional video featured footage of a first-person view (FPV) drone system being developed by the Armaments Bureau.
On Aug. 15, the Military News Agency released footage of soldiers using laptops and remote control equipment to launch small, explosive-laden drones, which detonated upon striking a car and speedboat being used as targets.
FPV drones are piloted from the drone’s point of view through an onboard camera, footage from which is transmitted to a pilot’s monitor or video goggles.
The ministry confirmed in a post on social media that the video showed a multifunction FPV drone system being developed by the bureau.
In addition to the FPV drone program, the military also plans to purchase 3,422 domestically produced microdrones in six different models from this year to 2028, as well as two types of counter-drone systems with 976 missiles between this year and 2026, it said.
Additional reporting by CNA
ENDEAVOR MANTA: The ship is programmed to automatically return to its designated home port and would self-destruct if seized by another party The Endeavor Manta, Taiwan’s first military-specification uncrewed surface vehicle (USV) tailor-made to operate in the Taiwan Strait in a bid to bolster the nation’s asymmetric combat capabilities made its first appearance at Kaohsiung’s Singda Harbor yesterday. Taking inspiration from Ukraine’s navy, which is using USVs to force Russia’s Black Sea fleet to take shelter within its own ports, CSBC Taiwan (台灣國際造船) established a research and development unit on USVs last year, CSBC chairman Huang Cheng-hung (黃正弘) said. With the exception of the satellite guidance system and the outboard motors — which were purchased from foreign companies that were not affiliated with Chinese-funded
PERMIT REVOKED: The influencer at a news conference said the National Immigration Agency was infringing on human rights and persecuting Chinese spouses Chinese influencer “Yaya in Taiwan” (亞亞在台灣) yesterday evening voluntarily left Taiwan, despite saying yesterday morning that she had “no intention” of leaving after her residence permit was revoked over her comments on Taiwan being “unified” with China by military force. The Ministry of the Interior yesterday had said that it could forcibly deport the influencer at midnight, but was considering taking a more flexible approach and beginning procedures this morning. The influencer, whose given name is Liu Zhenya (劉振亞), departed on a 8:45pm flight from Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) to Fuzhou, China. Liu held a news conference at the airport at 7pm,
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
RSS