Taiwan army tells lawmakers its failed counter-drone systems were also meant to guard the capital

Taiwan's army has told the Legislative Yuan that the 26 locally made counter-drone systems it tried to buy between 2024 and 2026 were meant to protect the capital garrison area and the defences along the Tamsui River as well as the outlying islands, United Daily News reported on 17 October. In its report to lawmakers, the Army Command said each system was supposed to enforce a 4-kilometre no-fly zone and a 6-kilometre restricted zone around its site, detecting and jamming commercial Class 1 and Class 2 drones. The Navy Command added that one of the 26 sets was earmarked for the Wuqiu defence area.

That list differs from the army's earlier public account, which had placed all 26 systems in the Kinmen and Matsu island defence zones, the paper said. The project grew out of a push for permanent drone defences on the outlying islands after Chinese civilian drones flew over Taiwanese military posts on Kinmen in August 2022, the investigative outlet Domino Theory reported in September.

The army's report also set out how the equipment was tested. It rented ten commercial drones and flew them at the Dafu test range from different directions over sea and land, through a full circle and at heights from 300 metres down to 30 metres, to check the systems' search radar, passive radar and jamming. Acceptance tests were held on 15 November 2025, 18 March 2026 and 9 July 2026, the last two of them retests.

All three ended in a fail. The army listed two major defects: the search and passive radars did not pick up every drone, and the electronic countermeasure system could not jam them. From the first batch of 13 systems it sampled five, and all five failed. The army said it refused to lower the specifications or accept the equipment at a reduced price. On 31 July it completed a contract termination checklist and asked the defence ministry to cancel the deal, and it says it has kept fining the contractor for late delivery and holding monthly supervision meetings in the meantime.

Taipei Times reported in July, citing a military source, that the contract was worth NT$987.81 million and was held by Tron Future. The systems had to detect low-flying targets as small as 10 square centimetres at a range of at least 6 kilometres and disrupt them at 4 kilometres, and the source said a commercial drone had slipped past the system during one assessment.

Defence Minister Wellington Koo announced the termination at a legislative hearing on 20 July, Domino Theory reported, and the ministry said it would give troops on the outlying islands handheld jamming guns developed by the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology while it looked for a permanent fix. The outlet said Tron Future would forfeit a NT$29.64 million performance bond and pay delay penalties. A South Korean partner of the company told Domino Theory it believed the failures had more to do with how the ministry conveyed its requirements than with the technology.

Looking ahead, the army said it will survey mature domestic and foreign technology, including suppliers with combat experience, and add them to its market analysis so it can obtain equipment that matches what its units need. It gave no date for a new tender, and neither the army nor the ministry has said what will cover the garrison and river sites in the meantime.

The revised site list widens the gap the cancelled contract leaves behind. Until a replacement is bought, the fixed detection and jamming cover the army planned is missing not only on the frontline islands but also around the capital garrison area and the Tamsui River, the waterway that runs from the coast into Taipei, according to the army's own deployment plan as reported by United Daily News.