Taiwan to deploy counter-UAV systems against Chinese drone incursions

Defense News August 2022 Global Security army industry
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Taiwan has successfully developed an indigenous remote-controlled drone defense system, Matt Yu and Evelyn Kao of China News Agency report, and it will first be deployed in the nation's outlying islands to counter hostile drone incursions, the Ministry of National Defense said on August 24, after a video emerged showing Taiwanese soldiers throwing rocks at a drone near a sentinel station on one of the islands.
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Screenshot of a Weibo page of China's Haixiadaobao newspaper (Picture source: Haixiadaobao)

The Taiwan Army's Kinmen Defense Command on August 24 confirmed that a Chinese drone had approached the guard station on Erdan Island in the Kinmen chain on August 16. It was allegedly controlled by the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) to show Taiwanese soldiers at a guard station throwing stones at the UAV. The soldiers on duty were on high alert during the incursion, and they handled the incident in accordance with standard procedures, adopting identification, response, and notification measures, the Kinmen Defense Command said, without mentioning the throwing of rocks.

The indigenous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), designed by Taiwan's National Chung Shan Institute of Science and Technology (NCIST), will be deployed at 45 air, naval, and missile bases throughout the country over the next four years, according to the Defense Ministry's budget plan. During the 2023 allocation, priority will be given to the defense zones of Taiwan's outlying islands, where the UAVs will first be deployed to counter China's gray-zone threats, the ministry said in a statement on August 24.

Taiwan's military should try deterrence strategies, including the use of drone jamming technology, to better deal with hostile drone incursions. Su Tzu-yun, an analyst at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, suggested on August 24 that Taiwan should deploy drone jamming guns and barrage balloons for low-level air defense, Matt Yu and Evelyn Kao report. A barrage balloon is a passive form of defense that is less likely to raise tensions between adversaries.