As China looms, Taiwan makes more drones for defense and the US military

The Taiwanese company Ubiqconn Technology also recently teamed up with the US drone company AeroVironment—best known for making Switchblade loitering munition drones—to embed AeroVironment’s software into a drone controller platform that would allow the Taiwanese military to operate multiple types of drone systems, Nikkei Asia reported. Rough air ahead However, Taiwan’s homegrown drone ambitions face plenty of challenges, including political disagreement. The special budget proposal for Taiwan’s military to purchase Taiwanese drones represents an attempt to break a political deadlock in Taiwan’s Legislature, where the majority consists of the opposition parties Kuomintang and the Taiwan People’s Party. That majority coalition vetoed funding for domestically produced drones before passing a reduced defense budget bill in May. Despite having a drone supply chain bolstered by chipmaking and electronics expertise, Taiwan faces an uphill battle in matching the manufacturing output and market dominance of China’s drone industry. The Shenzhen-based drone company DJI alone has between 70 and 80 percent global market share for commercial drones and is known for producing 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 . …