Taiwan President Lai Ching-te attends the island’s annual military drills simulating a Chinese invasion. Reuters/Yonhap
Taiwan’s multibillion-won drone defense network cannot even detect China’s newest drones, according to a government audit that has cast serious doubt on the reliability of a key air-defense system amid rising military tensions with Beijing.
Taiwan’s audit agency said in a recent report that a fixed anti-drone defense network — built at a cost of $3.55 billion (about 157.2 billion won) to protect air bases and other major military facilities — carries serious flaws, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported.
The core problem is a technology gap. The system, developed by the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology (NCSIST), Taiwan’s largest defense research body, was found to be powerless to detect or jam newer drones based on the 5.1 gigahertz frequency that China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has fielded since 2023. It also failed to counter some frequency bands used by BeiDou-3, China’s satellite navigation system.
The flaws do not end there. The report raised concerns that the system’s effectiveness against next-generation threats — including fiber-optic-guided drones and artificial intelligence-guided drones — had not been verified. Inspection schedules for some systems slipped by six to 12 months amid parts-procurement problems and construction delays, leaving gaps in base protection unavoidable.
Taiwan’s defense ministry sought to limit its responsibility, saying that most of the technologies flagged as problems had emerged after the project began in 2021. Sun Li-fang, a spokesperson for the defense ministry, said NCSIST had already verified new frequency-jamming capabilities and would supplement the functions through future upgrades to the system.
Experts pushed back, however, arguing that such explanations dilute the seriousness of the problem. Lo Ching-sheng, executive director of the Taiwan International Strategic Study Society, criticized the response: “The project has only just been completed, and there is no concrete answer on the timing of upgrades. If the PLA launches an attack in the meantime, how will we respond?”
A separate effort by Taiwan’s army to acquire anti-drone systems also recently collapsed. The military had sought to procure 26 fixed anti-drone systems worth NT$980 million (about 43.4 billion won), but the project was canceled last month after the equipment failed three consecutive performance tests.
Ma Wen-chun, a lawmaker with the main opposition Kuomintang, condemned the pattern: “There is a repeated practice of pushing ahead with purchases before verification of equipment performance is even complete.”