&imwidth=800&imheight=600&format=webp&quality=medium "Taiwan Builds a Drone Army as Trump-Xi Summit Leaves Island’s Future Unresolved | Defence Pulse")
Taiwan is accelerating preparations for a battlefield in which large numbers of relatively inexpensive drones, missiles and distributed sensors could complicate military operations against the island.
The strategy was demonstrated during three days of joint precision-fire exercises at the Jiupeng military base in Pingtung County. For the first time, multiple types of attack drones were incorporated into Taiwan's joint combat exercises.
But drones represented only one layer of the exercise.
Taiwan also deployed its indigenous Hsiung Feng III anti-ship missile, Tien Kung III surface-to-air missile and US-supplied HIMARS. The combination illustrates how Taiwan is attempting to connect reconnaissance and attack drones with longer-range precision weapons and coastal defences.
The underlying concept is asymmetric. Taiwan does not need to replicate every capability fielded by China's much larger military. Instead, Taipei is investing in distributed systems designed to increase the difficulty and potential cost of military action against the island.
More than 40,000 attack drones
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The scale of Taiwan's planned unmanned build-up is significant. Taiwan's government has proposed funding for more than 40,000 coastal attack drones, over 600 coastal surveillance and reconnaissance drones and more than 100 one-way attack unmanned boats in its near-term procurement plans. Parliament has separately approved a six-year framework for expanding indigenous unmanned capabilities.
The longer-term requirement is considerably larger, potentially extending to more than 200,000 coastal attack drones over six years, subject to future funding and procurement decisions.
Trump-Xi summit leaves Taiwan unresolved
The military push has gained further attention following the September summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Xi raised Taiwan during the talks and urged Washington to oppose Taiwanese independence. However, the White House's subsequent fact sheet contained no Taiwan-related agreement or policy announcement. Trump later said the two leaders had not spent much time discussing the issue.
For Taipei, meanwhile, the military direction is becoming increasingly visible. Its emerging defence architecture places greater emphasis on mass, mobility and distributed firepower, with drones increasingly operating alongside missiles and conventional forces rather than as standalone weapons
