The Ministry of National Defense has signed formal agreements with the US government to buy as many as 1,000 attack drones from defense contractor AeroVironment and defense tech firm Anduril Industries, according to people in the industry familiar with the transaction.
Taiwan signed a “letter of offer and acceptance” late last month, the step before signed contracts that specify quantities, dollar values and delivery dates.
Those contracts could be signed soon, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing the unannounced action.
Photo: Bloomberg
A US Department of State spokesperson declined to comment on any pending Taiwan sales.
Attack drones have burgeoned into a major component of modern warfare. Russian and Ukrainian forces have deployed thousands of drones to spy on each other and to carry out attacks in their ongoing war, while unmanned aerial vehicles were used in an Iranian attack on Israel in April.
The transactions demonstrate “that both Taiwan and the US are learning important lessons from the combat in Ukraine, and turning that knowledge into future procurement,” said Rear Admiral (Ret) Mark Montgomery, a senior director with the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, who has traveled to Taiwan to assess its defense needs.
In June, the US Department of State notified Congress that it had approved the sale of as many as 291 Anduril Altius 600M-V systems valued at US$300 million and as many as 720 AeroVironment Switchblade 300 “B” model drones valued at as much as US$60 million.
According to Anduril, its Altius 600M-V is a multi-mission aerial vehicle that allows a single operator to control multiple drones. It has a range of about 160km and a flight time of almost two hours.
AeroVironment’s 1.8kg model can loiter over a target for as long as 20 minutes and is equipped with a specialized anti-armor warhead. It has a range of about 30km.
Representatives at Taiwan’s office in Washington declined to comment, as did the US-Taiwan Business Council.
Taiwan is stepping up plans to create self-sufficient supply chains for combat drones and increase foreign orders from the US to counter China’s numerical superiority, a defense official said on Saturday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, the official said the nation’s armed forces are in agreement with US Admiral Samuel Paparo’s assessment that Taiwan’s military must be prepared to turn the nation’s waters into a “hellscape” for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Paparo, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, reiterated the concept during a Congressional hearing in Washington on Wednesday. He first coined the term in a security conference last
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