TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan faces challenges scaling up drone production amid the rising Chinese threat. 

The nation must find alternative ways to build up its drone fleet that avoids depending on the Chinese supply chain, according to a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report. “It’s not that Taiwan doesn’t have a good defense industry; it just needs to get bigger,” Washington-based Cato Institute senior fellow Eric Gomez said.

Drones have been effective in combat, given their capability to conduct surveillance and offensive missions. Taiwan has committed to building a national drone team with private companies with the defense ministry proposing a US$175 million budget (NT$5.6 billion) to purchase more than 3,000 drones within five years, per WSJ.

Despite rapidly boosting drone development and production, the core issue is scale. 

Chen Kuan-lu (陳冠如), chair of Taiwanese electronics company Thunder Tiger, said one bottleneck is the gimbal system. Taiwan already produces many gimbal parts, but most are shipped to China for assembly due to high domestic labor costs. Chen added gimbals manufactured outside China are at least double the price and hard to source. 

Engines are another problem, according to Jonson Huang (黃重生), chair of Taiwan UAV. When Huang tried to seek a domestic supplier to replace a Chinese-made engine in a drone prototype, most factories refused to cooperate because he could not guarantee a large enough volume of orders, per WSJ. 

Taiwan’s National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology has already developed multiple drones used by the military, including the Teng Yun, Albatross, and Cardinal. The Chien Hsiang anti-radiation loitering munition is also currently in production.