Taiwan is moving to make drones a central part of its defense planning and a larger part of its technology exports. The push links two priorities: building more uncrewed systems for a possible conflict with China’s military, and helping Taiwanese companies compete in a global drone market dominated by China’s DJI.
The scale of the plan is large. Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense proposed a special budget that would spend $6.6 billion over six years on drones made in Taiwan, according to the Central News Agency. Presented on June 18, the proposal would let the government buy more than 208,000 coastal attack drones, more than 1,400 coastal reconnaissance drones, and 1,320 uncrewed surface vessels between 2026 and 2031.
A defense plan built around many small systems
The proposal would mark a major increase from Taiwan’s current inventory, which includes just 5,000 US-made attack drones and domestically produced drones, according to Resilience Media. The core idea is straightforward: a large supply of military drones could help Taiwan discourage or respond to an attempted invasion by China’s military.
Taiwan has already been testing how such systems could work in coastal defense. During military exercises in early June, Taiwanese soldiers launched Altius-600 loitering munition drones from towed flatbed launchers to hit offshore targets, according to USNI News. Those drones are made by a subsidiary of Anduril Industries, the US military technology company.
Earlier this year, Taiwanese Marines used Taiwan-made drones in a similar exercise against targets at sea. Together, the drills show why coastal attack drones, reconnaissance drones, and uncrewed surface vessels are being treated as practical tools rather than distant concepts.
Domestic demand could help Taiwanese drone makers
The planned government purchases would also give Taiwanese manufacturers a stronger home market. That matters because companies are trying to position Taiwanese drone technology and components as alternatives to drones made in China.
Thunder Tiger is one of the most visible examples. The company has pitched its drones and components to the US military and European buyers, while building technology and manufacturing partnerships that could support more exports.
Taiwan’s drone exports have already accelerated. Between January and March 2026, Taiwan exported $115 million of fully assembled drones, according to Taiwan Premier Cho Jung-tai in an announcement on April 30. That was already more than the $93 million in total drone exports for the full year of 2025.
Thunder Tiger’s Overkill drones became the first from an Asian company to qualify for the Pentagon’s Blue Uncrewed Aircraft Systems Cleared List last year. The list certifies commercial drones for use by the US military. According to Rest of World, the small first-person view drones cost between $3,000 and $5,000 each and are similar to explosive FPV drones used on battlefields in Ukraine.
The company has also begun producing larger kamikaze drones starting at $30,000 based on US LUCAS one-way attack drones, Rest of World reported. Those LUCAS drones are reverse-engineered versions of Iran’s Shahed drones, which have been used in large numbers by both Russia and Iran.
Exports are not limited to finished drones
Taiwanese companies are also selling parts that sit inside drone systems. Thunder Tiger has supplied drone components to three companies taking part in the US Department of Defense’s $1 billion Drone Dominance Program, according to DSET.
Other Taiwanese companies are supplying flight controllers, batteries, motors, and drone microelectronics to Ukrainian companies. Czechia and Poland import tens of thousands of Taiwanese drones, some of which may sometimes be passed on to Ukraine.
Thunder Tiger has also expanded its overseas supply chain. In March 2026, it established a US facility in Ohio capable of producing more than 60,000 drone motors each year, Gene Su, general manager of Thunder Tiger, said in an IEEE Spectrum interview.
The export story is also increasingly about software. Taiwanese drone companies are known for hardware manufacturing expertise, while US companies and other foreign partners often bring more experience in AI and software. Taiwan’s NCSIST has sought to improve drone AI capabilities through partnerships with Western companies including Anduril, Auterion, and Shield AI, according to DSET.
Thunder Tiger has purchased AI software from Auterion for use across drones, ground robots, and sea drones. Ubiqconn Technology has also teamed with AeroVironment, the US company known for Switchblade loitering munition drones, to put AeroVironment software into a drone controller platform that would allow Taiwan’s military to operate multiple drone systems, Nikkei Asia reported.
The obstacles are political, industrial, and commercial
Taiwan’s drone ambitions still face major limits. One is political. The special budget proposal is an effort to break a deadlock in Taiwan’s Legislature, where the majority is made up of the opposition parties Kuomintang and the Taiwan People’s Party. That majority coalition previously vetoed funding for domestically produced drones before passing a reduced defense budget bill in May.
Another challenge is competition with China’s drone industry. Taiwan has chipmaking and electronics strengths, but China has far greater drone manufacturing scale and market power. DJI alone has between 70 and 80 percent global market share for commercial drones and is known for high-quality drones at extremely competitive prices.
“For the international market, how do you persuade other foreign governments to use Taiwanese-made drones two or three times more expensive than DJI’s?” said Ting-Wei Lin, a non-resident fellow at DSET, in a Resilience Media interview.
Supply chains are another test. Taiwanese drone makers are still trying to remove Chinese-made components from their products. Thunder Tiger recently defended supplying Taiwan’s military with drones that included chips made by the French company STMicroelectronics but packaged in China.
Production capacity is the long-term test
Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs says current monthly drone production capacity stands at 15,000 drones per month. The ministry projects that the Taiwanese drone industry could exceed 100,000 drones per month by 2030.
Ukraine offers one example of how fast capacity can grow under pressure. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ukraine could produce only several thousand FPV drones per year, according to Just Security. By 2025, government and industry efforts had raised domestic FPV drone production to about 3 million drones, and Ukraine’s defense industry could produce more than 8 million such drones in 2026.
Taiwanese civil defense groups are also taking lessons from Ukraine by offering more drone flight training, The Guardian reported. Even as AI-powered battlefield drones draw attention, most drones still depend heavily on human operators in one way or another.
That makes Taiwan’s drone buildout more than a procurement plan. It is a test of whether domestic industry, foreign partnerships, military demand, and trained operators can grow quickly enough to meet Taiwan’s defense needs and support a larger export business at the same time.