Taiwan’s drone exports to Europe grew 41.7-fold from 2024 to last year, with demand from Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression the most likely driver of growth, a study showed.
The Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET) in a statement on Wednesday said it found that many of Taiwan’s uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) sales were from Poland and the Czech Republic.
These countries likely transferred the drones to Ukraine to aid it in its fight against the Russian invasion that started in 2022, it said.
Photo: Lin Yi-chang, Taipei Times
Despite the gains, Taiwan is not the dominant drone exporter to these markets, ranking second and fourth in Poland and Czechia respectively, the DSET said, adding that China remained the leader in drone manufacturing.
Taiwan-EU strategic cooperation is less tightly integrated than the relationship between Taiwan and the US, it said.
Unlike the US, decoupling from Chinese supply chains is not a priority for the EU, as the bloc is more interested in securing critical resources from uninvolved third parties than excluding China, the DSET said.
The EU Defence Readiness Roadmap 2030 emphasizes defense cooperation between bloc members, NATO members, Japan and India, without reference to Taiwan, it said.
Lithuania is the only EU country that has a state policy to decouple from Chinese supply chains for national defense, it added.
The DSET called on the government to create a trustworthy, Europe-facing procurement interface that allows product origin tracing and vetting to facilitate the sale of drones and subsystems.
Taiwanese enterprises should expand drone depots and technical support facilities in Europe to shorten upgrade and maintenance cycles, as well as create standardized certification tests and documentations that guarantee quality and performance to increase their competitiveness, it said.
Investment in flight control stacking, secure communications, and integration of user interface and upgrade pipelines would help close an important gap in the capabilities of Taiwanese drones, the DSET said.
A Nikkei Asia report on Wednesday cited the study, saying that Taiwan is making a significant investment in drones as an export industry and a defensive capability to deter China’s military threat.
President William Lai (賴清德) has pushed for a self-sufficient drone industry as a part of the nation’s asymmetric defense doctrine, which is strongly backed by the US, following the success Ukraine achieved in fending off numerically superior Russian forces, it said.
“Boosting Taiwan’s drone industry has gained an additional sense of urgency because, in a crisis, China’s dominance of the UAV supply chain could jeopardize companies Beijing dislikes and imperil flows,” it added .
“Many drones exported from Taiwan to Central and Eastern Europe are procured by private Ukrainian actors and then routed to Ukraine, while Taiwanese-made batteries, motors, flight controllers and airframes are now steadily supplied to local firms,” it quoted DSET analyst Samara Duerr as saying.
That indicated that a “non-China” supply chain is emerging, she was quoted as saying.
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