If the People’s Liberation Army invades Taiwan, the ROC military working to defend Taiwan will want to have many drones on hand to attack the attackers with. Military news and analyses keep telling us about the importance of drones to the warfare of our time.
In October 2025, the Executive Yuan approved a six-year NT$44.2 billion plan to develop the domestic drone industry. That in itself doesn’t authorize the spending. It has to become part of the annual budget approved by the Legislative Yuan.
Droning on
The Kuomintang-led majority has proposed cutting this spending on drones altogether from the regular 2026 budget. When it caught flak for that idea, its next idea was to keep the drone spending in the budget but freeze it. The freeze would prevent the funds from being used even after the budget passes until such time as the Legislative Yuan decides to lift the freeze; a denial-through-delay tactic. What happens next is up in the air. The 2026 budget still hasn’t been passed. It’s been delayed for months.
Also not being passed is a new special budget focusing on drones. As controlled by the KMT-TPP majority, the Legislative Yuan has shelved “a NT$210 billion (US$6.59 billion) special budget bill for the procurement of domestically produced drones proposed by the Executive Yuan on Thursday last week.” This new special budget is being proposed because spending on drone procurement was lopped from the special budget that passed in May 2026 (Taipei Times, June 26, 2026).
During a plenary session, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) proposed postponing the [special budget bill’s] placement on the legislative agenda. The motion passed with 55 votes in favor and 44 against, with the legislative majority held by the opposition KMT and Taiwan People’s Party preventing the bill from being sent to committee for review.
Further obstruction by opposition parties would raise doubts about their commitment to strengthening national defense, Democratic Progressive Party caucus secretary-general Fan Yun said before the session.
The opposition should not mislead Taiwanese society with inexplicable reasons, she said, urging lawmakers to send the bill to committee….
The special budget act proposed by the Executive Yuan would cover the procurement of 1,446 coastal reconnaissance drones, 208,200 coastal attack drones and 1,320 uncrewed surface vessels, the Ministry of National Defense has said.
It was proposed after the Legislative Yuan last month removed funding for domestic drone procurement from a proposed NT$1.25 trillion special defense budget, creating a gap in defense capabilities and limiting opportunities to promote economic growth, ministry official Weng Yu-heng said during a post-Cabinet meeting news conference on Thursday last week.
The Executive Yuan and the DDP minority in the legislature keep pushing for drone development and drone procurement, and the KMT-TPP majority keeps blocking their proposals, citing “inexplicable” procedural reasons that somehow apply only to spending on drones.
Why? Why doesn’t the pro-Beijing majority in the Legislative Yuan want Taiwan to have an abundant supply of drones? Why has funding for drones been such a big stumbling block in budget negotiations? Is it because drones work?
Also see:
Taipei Times: “Industry urges passing of drone budget” (July 24, 2026)
“Industry leaders and security researchers yesterday urged lawmakers to pass the government’s special budget for drones a day after the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus said it would freeze the budget for the Executive Yuan’s drone industry plan rather than scrapping it. If the budget is not passed, Taiwan could miss the window to obtain key military capabilities, they added.”
