Foreign firms will hide their names at Taiwan's first uncrewed vehicle expo, organiser says

Some foreign companies will stay anonymous or show up only through local agents at Taiwan's first trade show for uncrewed boats and underwater vehicles, because they fear pressure from China, the event's organiser said on 27 October.

Chan Hsiang-chih, chairman of the Underwater Noise Association, which runs the 2026 Taiwan Marine Tech and Unmanned Robotics Expo, said at a pre-show briefing in Taipei that geopolitics had weighed heavily on the planning. Some leading foreign sonar makers will only appear under the banners of their Taiwanese distributors, he said, and at least two firms, one from Norway and one from the United Kingdom, told organisers they could come to look but could not display their names, Storm Media reported.

Chan said the show had also been told to exclude exhibitors from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau because it receives subsidies from Taiwan's Ocean Affairs Council and the economy ministry's International Trade Administration, which act as its supervising agencies.

A heavy American presence

The expo, known as MATURE Taiwan, runs from 3 to 5 November at the Greater Tainan Convention Center and fills 6,000 square metres. It has drawn 88 exhibitors, 66 from Taiwan and 22 from six other countries. Seventeen of the foreign participants are American, gathered by a US industry alliance called UPIA, with nine in a US pavilion and eight spread across other halls.

Chan said the show was first planned around marine science, but American interest pushed uncrewed vehicles to the centre, and most exhibits are now aerial and surface drones. Organisers had hoped to play down military uses in the forums, yet military applications proved the most sought-after topic, and the only three sessions on the theme are all talks paid for by companies, the Liberty Times reported.

CSBC, Taiwan's largest shipbuilder, said it would show remote control of a group of uncrewed boats operated across Tainan and Rhode Island together with its US partner Havoc, with the two firms' executives on site on 3 November. The demonstration is meant to show avoidance, collision prevention and autonomous navigation by several boats at once. CSBC also said it could guarantee delivery and warranty terms to government buyers.

Battle-tested boats on the water

A day before the opening, nine companies will run boats in the water off Anping harbour in Tainan, among them Taiwan's Thunder Tiger, STR8 and Chan's own firm, the US companies MARTAC, UFORCE, Seasats and Lorien Dynamics, Britain's Sonardyne and Singapore's BeeX, according to the Liberty Times.

Chan said UFORCE would bring an uncrewed boat with front-line combat experience in Ukraine. Seasats said some months ago that one of its boats had crossed the Taiwan Strait and photographed Chinese warships, a claim the Central News Agency and the Liberty Times both noted in their reports.

Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim plans to watch the harbour demonstration on the morning of 2 November, accompanied by Ocean Affairs Council minister Kuan Bi-ling, Tainan Mayor Huang Wei-che and officials of the American Institute in Taiwan, the Liberty Times reported. Taiwanese and US firms also plan to sign a cooperation memorandum on 3 November, with 10 companies signed up so far.

Chan argued that the industry needs real orders rather than prototypes. If a buyer ordered 100 uncrewed boats at once, he said, each would need sonar, sensors and radar, and that volume would make the show far more useful to Taiwanese suppliers. He added that US companies are looking at Taiwan as a possible second supply chain in Asia.