Taiwan's army adds night attacks and paired-drone strikes to its four-day drone evaluation

Taiwan's army will hold its second drone training and evaluation of the year from 24 to 27 November, and for the first time units will be tested on night engagements and on strikes flown by two drones working together, the Liberty Times reported on Saturday, citing military confirmation. The event at the Neijiao camp training ground in Baihe, Tainan, will run twice as long as the two-day round held in April.

The paper said the content is shifting from single-drone handling to tactical use. Army commander General Lu Kun-hsiu had already set the direction at a military affairs meeting, saying the second-half evaluation would focus on combining reconnaissance with attack, striking beyond the operator's line of sight, and attacking at night.

In the paired-strike event, one drone will search for and lock on to a target from altitude while a second flies in low to hit it, a test of how well pilots and navigators communicate. In the night event, crews will have to find and attack targets using only infrared thermal imaging and night-vision equipment. The report said the night task was the hardest on the card but the closest to what troops would face in a night raid or in repelling a landing.

The longer format reflects how fast the force has grown. According to the Liberty Times, the army's northern, central and southern corps have each set up a drone battalion in the second half of the year, the Penghu Defense Command became the first outlying command to field a drone battalion in July, and Kinmen, Matsu and Dongyin have formed drone companies. The Unmanned Systems Training Command is staging the four days jointly with the army's Southern Test Center so that all of the new battalions and companies can compete under sustained pressure.

Units are already preparing. The military's Youth Daily News reported that the commander of the Hualien-Taitung Defense Command, a lieutenant general, visited his drone company on Friday to encourage the soldiers entered in the annual evaluation and trainees on a basic drone operation and instructor course. He said drones play a key role in Taiwan's defensive operations and that combining licensing tests with instructor training would build a pool of seed instructors to spread the skills through the force.

The army upgraded its drone training unit into the Unmanned Systems Training Command on 10 April and gave it the status of a branch proponent, the army's lead authority for a combat arm. Its first army-wide evaluation followed on 29 and 30 April at the Southern Test Center, with 16 drone companies, including those of the Kinmen, Matsu and Hualien commands, flying first-person-view drones on the first day and artillery commands and the Penghu drone battalion flying bomb-dropping quadcopters on the second.

That round tested basic skills such as flying through arches and window frames, hitting balloons tied to moving vehicles and in the air, and dropping munitions on a marked area. The Matsu Defense Command drone company won the first-person-view group and the 58th Artillery Command drone battalion won the bombing group, China Times reported at the time.

Lu said at the April prize-giving that the army was developing drones because of future combat needs rather than to follow a trend, and urged units to prepare for the second-half evaluation. Officers said then that the evaluations would be held about every six months and could later grow into a national presidential cup drone contest also open to the coast guard, police and universities.

The Liberty Times said the four-day event was meant as a starting point, with lessons from the range to be carried back to the army's combined arms brigades and front-line units. The report did not say whether the results would be made public.