Taiwan’s political parties deadlocked over efforts to boost military drone capacity

Taiwan’s political parties deadlocked over efforts to boost military drone capacity Disagreements over funding and oversight threaten to undermine measures to improve the military’s capacity to wage unmanned warfare A political row is threatening to undermine Taiwan’s efforts to increase its stockpiles of military drones and has raised questions about the future of its domestic manufacturers. On Monday, lawmakers failed to agree on competing versions of a bill to buy and develop military drones after six hours of debate. While the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the opposition broadly agree on the need to expand the island’s arsenal of drones, they disagree about who should oversee the programme and how it should be funded. The cabinet has proposed a NT$210 billion (US$7.1 billion) special budget for the next five years to procure more than 200,000 locally produced drones and unmanned surface vessels, including coastal surveillance drones, coastal strike drones and small suicide boats. But the main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), wants to allocate NT$240 billion over six years through the regular annual budget. It said that yearly legislative scrutiny would strengthen fiscal oversight while allowing procurement plans to adapt more readily to rapidly evolving technology.