Taiwan coast guard shows US-made Jump 20 drone and M18 sea drone in public for first time

Taiwan's Coast Guard Administration publicly displayed a US-made Jump 20 vertical take-off drone and an M18 uncrewed surface vessel for the first time on Tuesday, 6 October, during a rehearsal for the National Day ceremony in front of the Presidential Office in Taipei, the Central News Agency reported.

The drone has been in coast guard service since the United States agreed at the end of 2022 to supply it, while the sea drone, built by the American company MARTAC, has been delivered but is still being used for training and has not yet been assigned to front-line duty, according to the agency's sources.

Part of a resilience-themed parade

This year's ceremony on Saturday, 10 October, includes disaster-prevention and whole-of-society defence resilience elements. Organisers said the National Space Organization, the Ocean Affairs Council, the health ministry, the National Police Agency and the National Fire Agency would form a convoy of display vehicles, and the coast guard showed off the Jump 20 as part of that line-up.

The coast guard group was led by its special task unit riding assault boats, followed by a mobile radar vehicle and an infrared thermal imaging vehicle meant to illustrate its surveillance network against smuggling. The last element, presented as a rescue vanguard, paired a mobile rescue vehicle with the drone and the uncrewed boat. The announcer did not name either model, and the identification came from people familiar with the equipment.

The rehearsal also featured a flypast of AH-64E, AH-1W, S-70C and UH-60M helicopters, a P-3C and two C-130H transports, and Mirage 2000, Indigenous Defense Fighter and F-16V jets, while a National Airborne Service Corps UH-60M demonstrated a hoist rescue and the air force Thunder Tiger team closed the event with five trainer jets trailing coloured smoke.

The two systems

Citing manufacturer AeroVironment, the agency said the Jump 20 can stay airborne for more than 13 hours, has an operating range of 185km, is 2.8m long with a 5.7m wingspan and is classed as a Group 3 vertical take-off and landing drone. A person familiar with the matter said the aircraft had extended the coast guard's maritime surveillance, giving earlier warning, helping to identify suspicious targets at sea and allowing ships to be dispatched more quickly.

Washington provided one Jump 20 system and operator training free of charge in a deal brokered at the end of 2022 by then coast guard director-general Chou Mei-wu, the coast guard confirmed in June 2023. It said the aim was to counter illegal ship-to-ship oil transfers, weapons proliferation, illegal fishing and cross-border crime and to support search and rescue. Upmedia reported at the time that the US Army had picked the type in 2022 to replace its RQ-7 Shadow and that Taiwan and Ukraine obtained the system at about the same time.

According to published specifications cited by the agency, the M18 is 5.5m long, reaches a top speed of 50 knots, has a maximum range of 500 nautical miles and can carry a 450kg payload, including surveillance equipment or a high-explosive warhead.

The state-run National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology signed a memorandum with MARTAC and its Taiwanese partner Confucian during the Taipei Aerospace and Defense Technology Exhibition in September 2025 covering joint research and co-manufacturing of uncrewed surface vessels. Naval News reported that the agreement could pave the way for local production of the M18 for the navy, while the agency said planned work included AI target recognition and tracking, autonomous interception, multi-boat coordination and autonomous tactical decision-making.

Why it matters

Displaying a long-endurance surveillance drone next to a sea drone that, by its published specifications, can carry a warhead suggests the coast guard is adding uncrewed systems to a patrol force built around crewed cutters, at a time when the state weapons institute is also seeking to build the same boat type in Taiwan.

The coast guard has not said how many Jump 20 or M18 units it operates, and the agency's report did not give a timetable for putting the sea drone into front-line service.