Taiwan's parliament is negotiating a special bill to buy homegrown attack and surveillance drones, a push the military says is urgent for deterring a Chinese invasion.

• The defense ministry wants to buy three types of drones: coastal surveillance drones, coastal attack drones, and small suicide drone boats.
• It plans to place huge, multi-year orders so local makers invest in factories and keep improving their technology.
• Military-grade standards are strict — flight control, communications, optics, navigation, and jamming resistance — and only firms that meet them can bid.
• Opposition parties want the economics ministry in charge instead, but the defense ministry insists it should run the program since the weapons were designed around actual invasion scenarios.
• The plan draws on lessons from the Russia-Ukraine war, with drones meant to swarm enemy landing ships and turn the Taiwan Strait into a killing zone.

Outlook: If the bill passes quickly, Taiwan's small drone makers get years of guaranteed government orders; the fight over which ministry controls the money is the main thing holding it up.