Taiwan is certainly not sitting on its hands, as recently, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense (MND) has signaled the possible arrival of its indigenous defensive drone system. As per the reports circulating, the system has already been developed containing a hidden number of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and is primarily designed to counter drone attacks from China in the face of the recent Taiwan-China tensions. Taiwan’s defense authority states that the drones will be subject to deployment at 45 air, naval, and missile bases throughout the country for the time span of the next four years. Hence, there’s a decent chance that we will be seeing more of these drone defensive systems in Taiwan’s military in the coming years.
Coupled with this, the areas located in the outlying islands of Taiwan will be on high alert and they will be provided with this defensive drone system on a priority basis. These areas are classified as “grey zones”. You might be aware of the recent flyover of the Chinese drone that passed over the Lieyu Garrison Battalion on the islands of Kinmen, Quemoy. During the invasion, a dashcam video from the aircraft captured footage of the soldiers below, who were seen in confusion at first, regarding the filming drone, and once they realized, they immediately prepared themselves for the counterattack. The soldiers started to throw stones at the drone in order to offset it, which you can see in the video embedded below:
One might argue about the authority of Kinmen, so it should be noted that the islands of Kinmen come under the Taiwanese government, so this was an invasion from China into their territory. This is the reason that Taiwan has launched its counter-drone attacking system in order to prevent possible attacks. Although Taiwan has kept the cards close to its heart regarding the newly developed defensive drone system, as per the details provided by MND, we can specify what the country is up to. A range of techniques are there that Taiwan can use to knock out the drones which include jamming the guns.
To that end, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has also stepped up to develop an “interceptor drone concept” under the scrutiny of the Mobile Force Protection (MFP) program. The system is on the verge of being practically deployed as DARPA held some demonstration tests of the system back in 2021. Its novel counter-drone system possesses “strong, stringy streamers” that attack the propulsion systems of the enemy drones and ultimately make them inoperative. So, that system might be on the cards for Taiwan.
Not only this, Taiwan’s government has also increased the country’s defense budget to $19 billion for the year 2023, which is double that of the previous year. Seeing all this, we can say that China’s actions have caused Taiwan to make big changes in its military system. One of those can be seen in the form of the drone versus drone system. Let’s see what the capabilities of this system are and how efficiently it will knock out drone attacks from China.