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Taiwan has developed suicide drones equivalent to those at the heart of Ukraine’s defence against Russia, the clearest sign yet of progress in the country’s efforts to build up rapidly its autonomous weapons capabilities to resist a potential attack from China.
The Taiwanese military’s weapons research arm and Thunder Tiger, one of the country’s leading drone makers, have completed live-fire testing and certification of an attack drone. It was powered by the same systems, from US-German software company Auterion, as those in drones that Ukraine uses against Russian tanks and naval assets, said Thunder Tiger and Auterion.
The drone, named Overkill, is equipped with Auterion’s artificial intelligence strike system and camera. Auterion chief executive Lorenz Meier said those features give Taiwan the same capabilities that Ukraine used to take out Russian T-90M tanks in August last year and destroy the radar of a Russian oil rig a few weeks ago.
“Here is the weapon,” Meier said, referencing footage of the live-fire tests. Taiwan’s military this month revealed the drone, which was jointly developed by Thunder Tiger and the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology (NCSIST), in a video of a test conducted in March. It did not release specifics at the time.
Suicide drones are manoeuvrable munitions that are destroyed in the process of hitting their target. Overkill is a first-person view drone (FPV), which is operated by an individual, as opposed to larger fixed-wing or switchblade drones.
While there were big differences between Taiwan and Ukraine, Meier noted, lessons from Ukrainian drone warfare were “one-to-one applicable” to a potential war with China over Taiwan.
“If you replace the [Russian] oil rig with a Chinese destroyer, that would be a destroyer without air defence from that moment,” he said.
NCSIST and Auterion announced a multiyear deal this month for the joint development of drones. But the Overkill drone shows that this development is already well under way.
Separately, Thunder Tiger has agreed to buy Auterion software licences for 25,000 drones, some of which will be manufactured for export, Meier said, indicating a steep scale-up of Taiwan’s drone production.
The country launched an effort three years ago to build a domestic supply chain for military use drones. It has also worked to forge closer co-operation between its drone industry and that of the US.
Washington is seeking to replace Chinese components in its drone supply chain, while Taipei hopes selling to the US will make it easier for its drone companies to build the capacity needed to fill future orders from its own military.
But both initiatives have been slow to show results. Taiwan’s entire drone industry produced fewer than 10,000 units in the 12 months to April, according to government-backed think-tank Research Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology — less than 6 per cent of its target for 2028.
Thunder Tiger general manager Gene Su called the 25,000 units cited by Meier a “ballpark figure” but confirmed that the company was in talks with several potential export customers.
“We think export is [a] very big opportunity, in the near-term south-east Asia,” he said, naming the Philippines, Vietnam, India and Indonesia as potential markets. “None of them want Chinese parts.”
Su added that he was confident that Taiwan’s armed forces would acquire large numbers of the drones once parliament approved a special budget for arms procurement.
The government is expected to submit the budget this autumn.
