As China looms, Taiwan makes more drones for defense and the US military
The drone business boom
Last year, Thunder Tiger’s Overkill drones became the first from an Asian company to qualify for the Pentagon’s Blue Uncrewed Aircraft Systems Cleared List, which certifies commercial drones for use by the US military. The small, first-person view (FPV) drones cost between $3,000 and $5,000 each, according to reporting from Rest of World, and are similar to the many explosive FPV drones being used on the battlefields in Ukraine.
Thunder Tiger has also started producing larger kamikaze drones starting at $30,000 based on the US LUCAS one-way attack drones, Rest of World reported. The LUCAS drones are themselves reverse-engineered versions of Iran’s Shahed drones that have been used in large numbers by both Russia and Iran.
Another one-way attack drone modeled on Israel’s Harpy drone was developed by the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology (NCSIST), a Taiwanese state-owned corporation, according to the ...
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