The Ministry of National Defense (MND) plans this year to obtain nearly 1,000 drones equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning abilities as part of its efforts to bolster the military’s combat capabilities, the ministry said in a report delivered to the Legislative Yuan last week said.
Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) is today to brief lawmakers at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee on details of the report on the implementation of the Sea-Air Combat Power Improvement Plan Purchase (海空戰力提升計畫採購).
The ministry has included drone development as an important part of military building plans after its wide application was seen in the Azerbaijani offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh last year and Russia’s war in Ukraine which began in 2022.
Photo: Taipei Times file
The Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology, a corporation that is part of the ministry’s Armaments Bureau, has been commissioned to research and develop medium and large-sized military drones and attack drones with military specifications.
The ministry is also working with private contractors to develop commercial drones for use by the military.
The increased use of drones on battlefields has shown their importance in modern warfare, the report says.
Aside from commissioning the Chungshan Institute and private contractors to build drones, the Armaments Bureau and the Ministry of Economic Affairs should discuss ways to shore up defense capabilities by integrating domestic sources and production capacity, and removing influence from the Chinese supply chain, it says.
The report says that the military plans to acquire 968 drones of seven different types this year, including attack drones produced by the Chungshan Institute as well as “second-generation short-range uncrewed aerial vehicles,” and “miniature,” “target acquisition,” “carrier,” “surveillance” and “land” drones purchased from private contractors.
The report also says that the military has taken AI and machine learning technologies into consideration when acquiring drones, such as those with “one-click takeoff,” “autonomous return,” “path planning flight,” “dynamic target tracking,” “coordinate distance calculation” and other capabilities to reduce operator load, flight risks and improve operational efficiency.
Emerging AI technologies would be included in future development plans, it says.
The ministry’s budget assessment report this year showed that it would acquire “target acquisition,” “miniature,” “ship-based,” “surveillance” and “land” commercial drones from this year to 2027, which would increase its total number of drones to 3,231.
The ministry’s budget plan also shows that it is procuring 201 new generation “short-range uncrewed aerial vehicles” jointly developed by the military and private contractors. No public data on the total number of attack drones is available.
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) today condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the Czech officials confirmed that Chinese agents had surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March last year. Czech Military Intelligence director Petr Bartovsky yesterday said that Chinese operatives had attempted to create the conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, going as far as to plan a collision with her car. Hsiao was vice president-elect at the time. The MAC said that it has requested an explanation and demanded a public apology from Beijing. The CCP has repeatedly ignored the desires