NewsHK
Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense has proposed a $6.6 billion special budget to dramatically expand the island's drone arsenal, targeting the purchase of more than 208,000 coastal attack drones, over 1,400 coastal reconnaissance drones, and 1,320 uncrewed surface vessels between 2026 and 2031—a plan that would transform Taiwan's domestic defense industry while signaling to Beijing that any military operation across the strait carries a rapidly rising cost.
The Scale of the Build-Up The budget, presented on June 18, dwarfs Taiwan's current inventory.
The island presently fields roughly 5,000 attack drones—a mix of US-made systems and domestically produced units, according to Resilience Media.
If the special budget passes, Taiwan would add more than forty times that figure in coastal attack drones alone over six years. The strategic logic is straightforward: saturation.
Keep reading