Taiwan lawmakers freeze NT$10bn of extra drone funding as committee review of defence top-up ends

Taiwanese lawmakers have frozen NT$10 billion of the defence ministry's extra spending on drones and small attack boats as a joint committee finished its review of this year's supplementary budget on 5 November, according to the United Daily News. The money cannot be spent until the ministry gives the legislature's foreign affairs and national defence committee more information about the programmes, and the ministry accepted the freeze.

The freeze was proposed by Wang An-hsiang, a Taiwan People's Party legislator. He argued that the ministry had not explained the legal basis for using the supplementary budget to buy four categories of drones, including littoral surveillance and littoral attack models, as well as small one-way attack drone boats. The NT$10 billion is taken from a NT$68.5 billion request for general equipment.

How the defence items fared

Defence Minister Wellington Koo attended the session. According to the ministry's Military News Agency, lawmakers questioned the military's plans for buying drones and uncrewed boats, asking how the equipment would be updated in successive versions as technology and operational needs change, and asked the ministry to explain what it needs at each stage and how it reached those assessments.

The agency said the defence proposals discussed at the meeting ended with two main resolutions, eight items held over for further handling, one item to be unfrozen once a written report is submitted, five items dealt with as proposed and one item approved after amendment. It did not list which programmes fell into each group.

What the money is for

The defence ministry is seeking more than NT$145 billion in the supplementary budget, of which about NT$81.2 billion is in the public part of the request, according to a ministry briefing to lawmakers on 4 November. About NT$68.8 billion is for military investment, including a middle-layer air defence network with missiles able to intercept tactical ballistic missiles, systems to counter small drones, the TAK situational awareness software for units, Rui Yuan II drones, smart vertical take-off drones and littoral surveillance drones, as well as new arsenal production lines for ammunition and obstacles to slow an invading force.

A further NT$8.2 billion would go to replenishing ammunition in short supply and speeding up the rollout of Taiwan's tactical network, while NT$4.1 billion would cover a pay gap linked to a larger force and new types of combat allowances, the ministry said.

Next steps

The overall supplementary budget totals NT$607.6 billion, and lawmakers filed 87 proposals on it. The largest dispute was over state support for the CPC Corporation and Taiwan Power Company, which the opposition sought to cut. With no agreement, those proposals were held over. The committee chairman, Kuomintang legislator Lin Te-fu, declared the review complete and said the bill must go through talks among party caucuses before it reaches the full legislature, according to the Central News Agency.

Under an earlier cross-party agreement, the caucuses aim to pass the supplementary budget in its third reading by 20 November. For the defence ministry, the immediate task is to deliver the information on its drone and drone-boat plans that lawmakers have demanded before the frozen NT$10 billion can be released.