Taiwan drone bill fight: DPP pushes special budget over KMT annual plan
Taiwan's parliament is split over how to fund a big military drone buildup, and the outcome decides whether local makers get the steady orders they need.
- The Cabinet wants a one-shot special budget of NT$210 billion, approved once and spent over several years.
- The opposition KMT wants NT$240 billion reviewed year by year, which drone firms say would leave them lurching between feast and famine.
- Building drone lines and molds is expensive, so companies will only invest if orders are locked in for three to five years.
- The opposition plan also demands high local-content ratios, which clashes with how drones actually work — Ukraine's troops modify off-the-shelf commercial models on the fly.
- A push to spread test sites evenly across every county is called unworkable; sea drones need real coastal water, not landlocked Nantou.
Outlook: Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu convenes cross-party talks on the drone bill, with a separate push to rewrite the existing drone innovation law to add test sites and train specialists.