Latest news with #DSET
DW
30-06-2025
- Business
- DW
Can Taiwan help Germany ease its reliance on Chinese drones? – DW – 06/30/2025
Germany is hoping to buy more drones from Taiwan as an alternative to China, but many financial and political hurdles stand in the way of Berlin reaching out to Taipei. For German companies looking to diversify their supply of drones beyond China and bypass its dominance of the global drone market, Taiwan is starting to look increasingly attractive. A report published this month by DSET, a Taiwanese think tank focusing on democracy, society and emerging technology, shows that Germany has become the second-largest importer of Taiwan-made drones in the first quarter of 2025. "We are trying to become more independent from China [regarding drones]," Verena Jackson, a researcher at the Center for Intelligence and Security Studies (CISS) at the University of the Armed Forces of Germany, told DW. Beijing sees Taiwan, a self-ruled island, as a breakaway province, and is actively discouraging diplomatic and trade ties between Taipei and other nations. Due to Germany's close economic cooperation with China, Beijing is likely to bristle at the idea of Berlin turning to Taiwan-made drones or key components as alternatives to Chinese ones. Although China still dominates the drone market with an estimated 70-80% share of worldwide production, Taiwan is emerging as "a rising star" in the supply chain, Jackson said. "The advantage for Taiwanese companies is that we are trying to do everything China-free. That has a very big attraction for our European partners," Hong-Lun Tiunn, Deputy Director of the National Security Program at DSET, told DW. Since 2022, Taiwan has stepped up its efforts to develop its own drone industry and build a "non-red" supply chain, a reference to manufacturing networks that are independent of China's influence. This is part of Taipei's defense strategy against a potential invasion by Beijing. In a wartime scenario, Taiwan could be subject to a Chinese blockade with no shipping access. "So we need to have our own capacity to manufacture all kinds of (drone) components," Tiunn said. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Since the second half of 2024, Europe has overtaken the United States as the primary export destination for Taiwanese drones, according to the DSET report. This shift came as China tightened export controls on drones and components, particularly those with military or dual-use capabilities, citing its own national security concerns. But many analysts believe the shift is largely driven by mounting pressure from the West over China's ties to Russia. "Europeans are trying to reach defense autonomy and they want to manufacture their own weapons or drones," Elizabeth Sun, a Berlin-based research fellow at DSET, told DW. In December, the European Union announced sanctions on four Chinese firms for "supplying sensitive drone components and microelectronic components" to the Russian military. During her visit to Beijing last year, former German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock warned that drones from Chinese factories "attack peace in the middle of Europe" and "hurt our central security interests." CISS researcher Jackson also pointed out that since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Germany has come to realize "there is an imminent risk coming from China when it comes to cybersecurity or drones." However, Berling does not share Taipei's ambition of establishing a fully China-free drone supply chain. "We are very reliant on Chinese drones as a whole, as full drones, but also on parts," Jackson said. She added that cutting China ties entirely would be unrealistic, especially given the country's dominance in raw materials like rare earth elements, which are crucial components in drone technology. Instead, Germany is attempting to diversify key components such as software, sensors, and chips — areas that carry higher national security risks. Software updates, for instance, are subject to data leaks. "There's basically an open door where all information can go out of Germany and then go to foreign intelligence services," Jackson said. This is where Taiwan — home to some of the world's most advanced chip manufacturers and a strong IT sector — could step in. Although Taiwanese companies only hold a small share of the German drone market, "the components we are trying to provide are motors and chips, the very key parts, and our system integration experience to Germany," Tiunn said. While established corporations have long-standing ties with Chinese suppliers, drone production is now surging across southern Germany and startups are increasingly open to partnering with Taiwan, Jackson pointed out. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Earlier this month, Taiwan signed a partnership deal with US and German-based Auterion for drone software that has been battle-tested in Ukraine to help step up its defenses against growing military threats from China. As it aims to provide drones and key components to other democracies, Taiwan is struggling to meet its own demand. The island set a goal for domestic manufacturers to produce 180,000 drones per year by 2028. But the current annual production capacity — between 8,000 to 10,000 units — falls well short of that target. This gap is due to the high cost of "China-free" drones, low domestic procurement, and minimal foreign government orders, according to the DSET report. Cathay Fang, a policy analyst in the National Security and Economic Security Research Program at DSET, noted that the current priority is improving the cybersecurity of Taiwanese drones in line with US security initiatives for Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS). This focus could help open up the European market. "When we see that the United States and Taiwan are collaborating closely, German companies would certainly follow," Jackson said. But Germany is facing its own challenges in reducing its reliance on Chinese drones and key components. "Our procurement laws are really cost-focused. And China is still the most cost-effective country," Jackson said. "It takes time to implement also cybersecurity or security aspects." Last year, the German army reportedly eased procurement procedures for small commercial drones from Chinese companies, including DJI, the world's largest consumer drone manufacturer. This shows that, despite growing concerns from security analysts, the political will in Germany to address the potential risks of using Chinese drones remains limited. "It's developing — the awareness here and the urge to do something about it. But it's certainly not at the point where it's sufficient," Jackson said. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
WIRED
23-06-2025
- Business
- WIRED
Taiwan Is Rushing to Make Its Own Drones Before It's Too Late
Jun 23, 2025 6:00 AM Unmanned vehicles are increasingly becoming essential weapons of war. But with a potential conflict with China looming large, Taiwan is scrambling to build a domestic drone industry from scratch. Photograph: YASSER AL-ZAYYAT/Getty Images In the span of just a few years, drones have become instrumental in warfare. Conflicts in Ukraine, Iran, Nagorno-Karabakh, Sudan, and elsewhere have shown how autonomous vehicles have become a quintessential part of modern combat. It's a fact that Taiwan knows all too well. The island nation, fearing imminent invasion from China, has both the need, know-how, and industry necessary to build a robust and advanced drone program. Yet Taiwan, which has set an ambitious target of producing 180,000 drones per year by 2028, is struggling to create this industry from scratch. Last year, it produced fewer than 10,000. 'Taiwan definitely has the ability to make the best drones in the world,' says Cathy Fang, a policy analyst at the Research Institute for Democracy, Society, and Emerging Technology (DSET). So why doesn't it? Designing a Hellscape Fang and her colleagues published a lengthy report on June 16 that reveals just how sluggish Taiwan's drone industry has been. According to their research, the country has produced between 8,000 and 10,000 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) over the past year, with 'structural challenges' standing in the way of the current rate and the ambitious goal. Their study found that Taiwan's drone production has been stymied by 'high manufacturing costs, low domestic procurement, and minimal foreign government orders.' Fang and other DSET researchers briefed WIRED on the details of their report in their Taipei offices in May. Taiwan has lived under the threat of Chinese invasion for decades, but recent years have turned it into a more immediate possibility. Beijing has made clear that it intends to complete its aggressive modernization of the People's Liberation Army by 2027; Taiwanese officials say invasion could come that early but almost certainly before Premier Xi Jinping's current term in office ends in 2029. While there are competing views about what form, exactly, Chinese military aggression could take, military analysts in Taiwan fear it could be a full combined arms onslaught: From air and sea at first, followed by a full land invasion. That means Taiwan has an imperative to come up with innovative solutions to defend itself, and fast. As one American commander remarked in 2023, Taiwan's self-defense will mean turning the Taiwan Strait into a 'hellscape'—bombarding incoming Chinese ships and planes with swarms of uncrewed aerial and naval vehicles. This strategy doesn't need to destroy the considerable Chinese navy and air force outright, but it does need to frustrate Beijing's advances long enough for Taiwan's allies to rally to its defense. Taipei is already doing some of this right. In 2022, the government launched the Drone National Team, a program meant to match government and industry to scale up the nascent field. In particular, the team was dispatched to learn lessons from Ukraine, whose defensive strategy has relied heavily on small, tactical, cheap UAVs capable of carrying out multiple missions and integrating closely with ground units. Today, the country boasts a massive domestic drone industry, with Kyiv planning to buy 4.5 million small drones this year, on top of its long-range uncrewed missile program, its autonomous land vehicles, and its uncrewed naval drones. But Ukraine also shows the disadvantage at which Taiwan finds itself. In a secret workshop in Kyiv, a Ukrainian drone maker told WIRED that he had no choice but to source his antennas and chips from China. Taiwanese chips were too expensive. Competing With DJI 'We are not able to compete with DJI,' Fang says, referring to the massive Chinese drone manufacturer. Other countries that have scaled up their drone programs recently have accepted Chinese technology in their supply chain—either as an asset or a necessary evil. But Taiwan, for obvious reasons, is leery of including any Chinese tech. That makes drone manufacturing hard. China maintains a massive advantage in producing certain critical pieces of these UAVs—including the gimbals, optical sensors, and antennas. To buy that equipment, Taiwan needs to find allied suppliers, often at considerable cost. Taiwan has even had difficulty leveraging its advantages. The country has an advanced battery industry, for example—but it's heavily reliant on Chinese critical minerals. The island nation also boasts the world's most impressive semiconductor industry: It produces 60 percent of the world's semiconductors and 90 percent of the advanced semiconductors. But, Fang says, Taiwan does not produce any chips specifically for use on drones. 'Taiwanese drone makers are buying chips from Qualcomm and Nvidia, but those chips are not specifically for drones,' she says. 'Those are communication chips, sensor chips, those are for more general use.' And even those general chips are significantly more expensive than their Chinese competitors, sometimes by a factor of 10. 'We definitely have the ability to make them,' Fang adds. 'But the reason why these companies are not involved in this market is because the scale is just too small.' It's a catch-22: Taiwanese companies can't increase production and reduce costs until they get more orders, but they can't get more orders because their costs are too high. 'We need more government procurement from Taiwan itself,' Fang says. Thus far, the nation's defense ministry has ordered fewer than 4,000 drones, although it plans to purchase tens of thousands more in the years to come. It owes to the fact, analysts say, that financing the kind of defense spending that Taiwan needs remains politically difficult. Earlier this year, opposition lawmakers in the Legislative Yuan passed a budget that slashed planned defense spending. If Taiwan's industry has any hope of growing by the scale the country needs, Fang says there's a clear answer: America. Building an Army of Drones DSET has a number of recommendations, both for Taiwan and America, on how to establish this ambitious new industry. For starters, they argue, America needs to start actually supporting Taiwan's local industry. To date, no Taiwanese drone manufacturer has secured access to the Department of Defense's 'blue list'—its roster of trusted drone suppliers. Earning a spot on that list could mean millions or billions of dollars in orders from the Pentagon. There has been some trade in the other direction. The US has supplied Taiwan with about 1,000 drones, mostly the smaller AeroVironment Switchblade loitering munition as well as a small number of the MQ-9 Reaper long-range drones. The US has also been shipping some novel technology to Taiwan, including access to its Replicator Initiative: an autonomous drone swarm capability designed to find and destroy targets at sea. But, DSET argues, some of these capabilities have been more a product of what the US thinks Taiwan needs. Washington could be more effective if it developed partnerships with Taiwanese industry, DSET contends, and make longer-term decisions about what Taipei needs for its self-defense. Finally, DSET writes, Washington should drop its tariffs—on Taiwanese UAVs, at the very least. Taiwan itself has even more work to do. DSET recommends establishing a more detailed roadmap for what capabilities it wants and needs and how it intends to get there. While plenty of focus will be on the small, first-person-view drones—the kind increasingly ubiquitous in conflicts worldwide—Taiwan will need to expand into other kinds of technology. While Taipei has identified a wide range of capabilities it hopes to acquire, DSET found it has been mostly procuring smaller surveillance drones. Both Russia and Iran have recently shown how long-range uncrewed vehicles can be made at scale and significantly cheaper than traditional missiles. Perhaps more importantly, the DSET report argues, Taiwan needs to be able to plug into American needs and procurement programs—and America prioritizes longer-range systems. The preponderance of these drones has also heightened the need for defenses, particularly around electronic warfare. Taipei is investing in anti-drone systems, Fang says, but it remains an 'emerging concept.' (A defense analyst told WIRED that Taiwan is simply 'not prepared to fight in a complex electromagnetic environment.') One of the weak points in China's invasion will be its landing crafts. Beijing has been feverishly building a fleet of barges that would be able to transport troops and tanks across the Taiwan Strait. Taiwan has been developing domestically made submarines with the hope of sinking those barges before they arrive—that capability would be augmented significantly by autonomous or uncrewed submersibles. Ukraine has pioneered its own models of semiautonomous uncrewed naval vehicles, which have successfully sunk Russian warships and damaged the Kerch Bridge in Crimea. As Western nations get ambitious about how to mass-produce cost-effective and high-impact defense strategies, many are looking toward uncrewed vehicles as a silver bullet. But, as Taiwan shows, this is all easier said than done. If Taiwan gets this wrong, DSET argues, 'Taiwan risks falling into a gray zone of limited interoperability and unscalable production.' Meanwhile, 'the US risks failing to develop trusted regional manufacturing capacity at the speed required to compete with China's drone diplomacy and defense exports.' It may seem like an insurmountable challenge, especially for a nation facing an existential threat from a much bigger neighbor. But, as Fang points out, Ukraine was in the same situation. 'Ukraine? They didn't even imagine that kind of capacity three years ago,' she says. But a 'sense of survival' kicked in, and Kyiv stood up the world's most impressive indigenous drone manufacturing industry. Taipei 'is, right now, in low mode,' Fang says. 'Because we are still not at war. But I don't want to underestimate our capacity, even though we are in a peacetime.'
HKFP
17-06-2025
- Business
- HKFP
Taiwan tests sea drones as China's military pressure continues
A Taiwanese-made sea drone capable of carrying bombs skimmed across waters off the island Tuesday in a display of uncrewed surface vehicles that could boost its military firepower against China. With Beijing sustaining military pressure on the island, Taiwan is increasing investment in aerial and maritime drones, which have been widely used in Russia's war in Ukraine to outfox traditional heavy weaponry. China claims Taiwan is part of its territory and has threatened to use force to bring it under its control. Twelve local and foreign companies took part in an Uncrewed Sea Vehicle (USV) demonstration hosted by the government's National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology (NCSIST) in Yilan, southeast of Taipei. It was an opportunity for 'potential clients such as the military and coast guard' to collect data from the drone manufacturers for future mass production, the institute said in a statement. Taiwanese shipbuilder Lungteh's Black Tide sea drone, which is designed to operate in 'contested environments', was one of three USVs put through its paces. With a top speed of more than 43 knots (80 kilometres per hour; 50 miles per hour), the Black Tide can be used for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and 'one-way strike', according to the company. Meanwhile, Carbon-Based Technology Inc's 'stealth' USV could carry bombs and was cheap enough to conduct 'sacrificial' missions, said company director Stacy Yu after the drone was tested. US defence technology company Auterion also signed a deal with Taiwan for its 'battle-tested' operating system and swarming technology to be used in a new generation of military drones. While President Lai Ching-te has pledged to make Taiwan 'the Asian hub' for drone production, there have been challenges to ramping up the island's output. Taiwan's annual production capacity for aerial drones is between 8,000 to 10,000 units, well below its 2028 target of 180,000 units, the Research Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET) said in a report on Monday. High manufacturing costs from using non-China components made it 'difficult for Taiwanese products to compete with Chinese-made products in the commercial market', DSET analysts said. And limited domestic orders and a scarcity of foreign government contracts were also impeding 'further scaling' of production, it said.
Int'l Business Times
17-06-2025
- Business
- Int'l Business Times
Taiwan Tests Sea Drones As China Keeps Up Military Pressure
A Taiwanese-made sea drone capable of carrying bombs skimmed across waters off the island Tuesday in a display of uncrewed surface vehicles that could boost its military firepower against China. With Beijing sustaining military pressure on the island, Taiwan is increasing investment in aerial and maritime drones, which have been widely used in Russia's war in Ukraine to outfox traditional heavy weaponry. China claims Taiwan is part of its territory and has threatened to use force to bring it under its control. Twelve local and foreign companies took part in an Uncrewed Sea Vehicle (USV) demonstration hosted by the government's National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology (NCSIST) in Yilan, southeast of Taipei. It was an opportunity for "potential clients such as the military and coast guard" to collect data from the drone manufacturers for future mass production, the institute said in a statement. Taiwanese shipbuilder Lungteh's Black Tide sea drone, which is designed to operate in "contested environments", was one of three USVs put through its paces. With a top speed of more than 43 knots (80 kilometres per hour; 50 miles per hour), the Black Tide can be used for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and "one-way strike", according to the company. Meanwhile, Carbon-Based Technology Inc's "stealth" USV could carry bombs and was cheap enough to conduct "sacrificial" missions, said company director Stacy Yu after the drone was tested. US defence technology company Auterion also signed a deal with Taiwan for its "battle-tested" operating system and swarming technology to be used in a new generation of military drones. While President Lai Ching-te has pledged to make Taiwan "the Asian hub" for drone production, there have been challenges to ramping up the island's output. Taiwan's annual production capacity for aerial drones is between 8,000 to 10,000 units, well below its 2028 target of 180,000 units, the Research Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET) said in a report on Monday. High manufacturing costs from using non-China components made it "difficult for Taiwanese products to compete with Chinese-made products in the commercial market", DSET analysts said. And limited domestic orders and a scarcity of foreign government contracts were also impeding "further scaling" of production, it said. Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te has pledged to make Taiwan "the Asian hub" for drone production AFP
New Straits Times
17-06-2025
- Business
- New Straits Times
Taiwan showcases uncrewed sea vehicles in face of China tensions
YILAN, Taiwan: A Taiwanese-made sea drone capable of carrying bombs skimmed across waters off the island Tuesday in a display of uncrewed surface vehicles that could boost its military firepower against China. With Beijing sustaining military pressure on the island, Taiwan is increasing investment in aerial and maritime drones, which have been widely used in Russia's war in Ukraine to outfox traditional heavy weaponry. China claims Taiwan is part of its territory and has threatened to use force to bring it under its control. Twelve local and foreign companies took part in an Uncrewed Sea Vehicle (USV) demonstration hosted by the government's National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology in Yilan, southeast of Taipei. It was an opportunity for "potential clients such as the military and coast guard" to collect data from the drone manufacturers for future mass production, the institute said in a statement. Taiwanese shipbuilder Lungteh's Black Tide sea drone, which is designed to operate in "contested environments", was one of three USVs put through its paces. With a top speed of more than 43 knots (80 kilometres per hour; 50 miles per hour), the Black Tide can be used for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and "one-way strike", according to the company. Meanwhile, Carbon-Based Technology Inc's "stealth" USV could carry bombs and was cheap enough to conduct "sacrificial" missions, said company director Stacy Yu after the drone was tested. While President Lai Ching-te has pledged to make Taiwan "the Asian hub" for drone production, there have been challenges to ramping up the island's output. Taiwan's annual production capacity for aerial drones is between 8,000 to 10,000 units, well below its 2028 target of 180,000 units, the Research Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET) said in a report on Monday. High manufacturing costs from using non-China components made it "difficult for Taiwanese products to compete with Chinese-made products in the commercial market," DSET analysts said. And limited domestic orders and a scarcity of foreign government contracts were also impeding "further scaling" of production, it said.--AFP
