The Ministry of National Defense has opened bidding for civilian contractors to deliver surveillance drones, shipborne surveillance drones, overland surveillance drones and small drones, with the contract worth NT$6.95 billion (US$225.06 million), government documents showed.
The notices were published on the government’s online public information platform on procurements at https://web.pcc.gov.tw/pis/.
The figure exceeded the Legislative Yuan Budget Center’s estimate for the National Drone Team program by NT$1.26 billion even before any contracting information is published for the optical acquisition drones, the last of the uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAV) on the ministry’s shopping list.
Photo: CNA
The ministry was to acquire for military use more than 3,000 UAVs of the five types from civilian manufacturers, it said in September last year.
At the time, it indicated an intent to acquire more than 3,000 civilian-developed UAVs in five types for the military and the Budget Center in February began to publish its estimations of how much they would cost.
The ministry’s publicly available timetable showed that the program was to begin awarding contracts for prototypes in February, initial evaluation of drone prototypes should be completed before late July, and improvements be made in August and September.
The program was expected to produce a slew of off-the-shelf drones for it to procure via limited bids next year and the notices were a confirmation it had achieved that goalpost of the project.
Although the public version of the ministry’s notices did not state the value of the contracts for the four drone types, the sum of the items was NT$6.95 billion, while the Budget Center’s estimated cost of the optical acquisition drones was NT$5.67 billion.
This means the total cost of the National Drone Team program would likely reach NT$7.52 billion, or nearly 32 percent more than the amount estimated by the Budget Center.
The ministry’s solicitations differed from the Budget Center’s report in that the budget for the small drone contract was boosted to NT$3.12 billion from NT$1.28 billion at the expense of other drone types, which had their budgets cut.
Assuming the unit cost of the small drones has remained the same, the increase to budget allocations would suggest that the military is now prepared to buy 3,600 units instead of the 1,485 units originally planned.
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