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Taiwan’s main opposition parties, the Kuomintang (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), are preventing Taiwan from acquiring systems critical to modern warfare. Deadlock in Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan (LY) is also delaying Taiwan’s acquisition of traditional warfighting systems, potentially damaging Taiwan’s military readiness. The LY’s National Defense Committee and Finance Committee held a joint hearing from March 23 to 26 to decide between three competing versions of the Special Budget for Asymmetric War. The lawmakers failed to reach a consensus. Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government is promoting a $40 billion budget to procure 200,000 unmanned systems, provide funding for Taiwan’s domestic arms industry, and develop an integrated air and missile defense (IAMD) network, alongside procurements for conventional systems from the United States. Both the TPP and KMT versions of the budget, which total around $12 billion, only fund conventional procurements and omit funding for large-scale drone procurement and IAMD systems. Conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine illustrate that widespread use of unmanned systems has reshaped modern warfare through the ability of low-cost systems to create battlefield transparency and a pervasive threat of precision strikes. The proliferation of long-range strike drones paired with precision missile strikes likewise necessitates an IAMD network capable of addressing such threats. A special budget that omits funding for significant numbers of unmanned systems and a Taiwanese IAMD network will leave Taiwan with limited ability to integrate lessons from foreign conflicts into its defense posture. It will also limit Taiwan’s ability to build its domestic drone industry, which is critical to reduce dependence on imported systems.
The PLA is emphasizing the development of AI-enabled swarm technology, likely to overwhelm advanced air defenses in Taiwan and US military infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific during a conflict. PRC state broadcasting service CCTV released footage on March 25 of the PRC’s “Atlas” drone swarm system conducting training. PRC state-owned tabloid Global Times published a commentary on the same day claiming that each Atlas launch vehicle can deploy 48 drones, and that a single command vehicle can coordinate 96 drones simultaneously. PLA Daily, the PLA’s official newspaper, published a commentary on March 25 citing examples from the armed forces of Ukraine, Russia, the United States, and Israel to suggest that developing AI-enabled autonomous capabilities for unmanned systems is crucial for countering electronic warfare methods that have been effective against drones, particularly on the Ukrainian battlefield.
The PRC appears to be emphasizing AI-enabled swarming technology in its drone development to produce systems that could saturate modern air defense systems during a Taiwan contingency. PLA Daily’s discussion of battlefield dynamics in Ukraine and the Middle East indicates that the PLA sees high-end air defense systems as inadequate or too costly for drone interception. The PLA could use a large-scale swarm attack to overwhelm and degrade Taiwan’s air defense network and complicate Taiwan’s ability to intercept precision missiles, which the PRC would likely use to create favorable conditions for an amphibious landing.
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