While still investing in traditional defense capabilities, Taiwan is also turning to drone technology to keep Beijing’s forces at bay. To expand the sector, though, it needs to have its powerhouse industries fully engaged, a former US commerce official said recently.
Drones — whether used for surveillance, disruption, or cheap precision strikes — are increasingly central to Taiwan’s push for an asymmetric edge as China looms as an imposing threat. Taipei has watched how Ukraine has used drones for survivability and flexibility on the battlefield and now wants to field them at scale.
After the US led its first major drone and counter-drone trade mission to Taiwan last fall, “the country woke up to the opportunity” that uncrewed systems represent for both defense and the economy, Betsy Shieh, a former senior commercial officer with the US Department of Commerce, said at a Hudson Institute event last week. “They could see the trend lines, and Taiwan moved very, very quickly.”
Taiwan’s government has strived in recent years to build up its drone industry. The defense ministry bought thousands of systems last year, with deliveries running through 2028, and this year rolled out a plan to buy tens of thousands more.
By 2030, Taipei aims to achieve domestic production of nearly 200,000 drones annually. It’s also working to stand up a China-free supply chain. The overarching goal is to accelerate industry growth, deepen its overall self-reliance, and expand ties with democratic partners.
Taiwan’s drone sector is being cultivated with strong government support, anchored by the state-affiliated National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology, which has partnerships with over 60 firms to accelerate development and production.
Taiwanese manufacturers like Thunder Tiger have teamed with international partners on first-person-view (FPV) attack drones and other platforms. Key technological areas for the industry include artificial intelligence, autonomy, and concepts like drone swarming, which are focal points for both commercial innovation and Taiwan’s defense strategy.
Shieh, who said she’d previously established conversations between Taipei and Washington about how to steer industry in the right direction, said during the panel that the next step is for Taiwan to get out of the way of business-to-business relationships. This would speed up the country’s drone ambitions.
Now, she said, Taipei needs to “lay the foundation for those companies to really redirect their resources from current industries, such as space industry, semiconductor industry, electric vehicle industry, and into these new defense technologies, both because it’s a huge economic opportunity but also to defend their own country.”
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