Taiwan's new defence committee leaders set up a session-long fight over drones, manpower and delays

Taiwan's Legislative Yuan settled who will run its defence committee on 8 October 2026, and the outcome says a good deal about how this session's defence budget fight will unfold. Kuomintang (KMT) legislator Hsu Chiao-hsin and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator Wang Yi-chuan were chosen without objection as the two conveners of the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, as the eight standing committees filled their leadership posts.

In the draw that followed, Wang took the Ministry of National Defense, the Veterans Affairs Council and the National Security Bureau, while Hsu took the foreign ministry and the Overseas Community Affairs Council. That gives the governing party's convener the job of scheduling the defence ministry's business, while the opposition convener has said her focus will be on questions the ministry finds hardest to answer.

The likely result is a session in which the defence ministry's spending requests reach the committee on a timetable the government side can shape, but in which the debate turns less on whether Taiwan should spend the money than on whether the armed forces can turn it into ready capability.

What the conveners control

Each standing committee has two conveners, and they decide the committee's agenda for the session, which is why the posts are usually fiercely contested. The 11th Legislative Yuan's sixth session opened on 29 September, and under an agreement reached by the party caucuses at the end of the previous session, the convener elections were held on 8 October. The DPP took eight convener seats, the KMT seven, and the KMT gave the judiciary committee seat it would otherwise have held to the Taiwan People's Party (TPP).

The conveners take turns scheduling business. ETtoday reported that the KMT had originally lined up Huang Chien-pin for the defence committee before switching to Hsu, and that the DPP had been expected to nominate Wang Ting-yu before choosing Wang Yi-chuan, reportedly with year-end local elections in mind. Wang Yi-chuan said he would coordinate with the ministries on scheduling and that the budget was the more important business this session.

The opposition's agenda

Hsu, who had not served as a convener before, set out a defence-heavy list of concerns. She said she would scrutinise the supplementary budget carefully and press the government for concrete answers on shortages of personnel and on their rights, delays in arms purchases, whether the air force will have enough pilots once the new F-16V jets arrive, and service members who would rather pay penalties to leave the military than stay on.

None of those questions is about whether Taiwan should buy weapons. They are about whether the military can absorb, crew and keep what it buys. Framing the session that way lets the opposition press the ministry hard on readiness without being cast as cutting defence.

The money at stake

The most contested defence item is likely to be NT$55.9 billion in the supplementary budget for three uncrewed systems: littoral surveillance drones, littoral attack drones and small explosive uncrewed boats. In a floor interpellation on 6 October, KMT legislator Ma Wen-chun asked why the items had not been included in the cabinet's original NT$210 billion special act for uncrewed systems. Premier Cho Jung-tai replied that the legislature had instead passed the opposition's NT$240 billion version, which requires the spending to go through annual budgets rather than a special budget.

Defence Minister Wellington Koo told lawmakers the same day that the uncrewed systems act was still under review when the 2027 budget was drawn up, so the ministry combined the money needed for 2026 and 2027 into this year's supplementary request to keep the programme on schedule and build drone capability. A TPP legislator noted that defence accounts for about 24% of the overall supplementary package, against 69.3% for measures to stabilise living costs.

That dispute over budget form is a dispute over control. Folding two years of drone money into a single supplementary request speeds procurement but gives lawmakers one large decision to fight over, and the convener who schedules the defence ministry's business will have a large say in when the committee takes it up.

What to watch

Hsu has said that, with the session overlapping an election campaign, debate in every committee will be intense. The early tests will be how quickly Wang schedules the defence ministry's supplementary budget report, whether opposition members seek to freeze part of the drone funding pending delivery plans, and whether the ministry can offer the committee firmer numbers on pilots, retention and delayed US deliveries than it has so far.