Taiwan prepares largest order of U.S. V-BAT drones to date in $1 billion push against Chinese forces.

The Taiwanese Navy has initiated an NT$36.00658 billion ($1.1356 billion) procurement program covering 2026 through 2029 to acquire 280 U.S.-made Shield AI V-BAT vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) unmanned aerial vehicles, alongside 140 control systems and 82 transport vehicles. This acquisition establishes distributed, runway-independent reconnaissance and targeting capabilities across surface warfare groups and littoral combat units, removing total reliance on shore-based radar and manned aviation assets. The distributed ratio of two aircraft per control system enables mobile deployment options designed to survive heavily contested maritime electronic warfare environments.

Taiwan's defense budget allocates funding for 280 Shield AI V-BAT drones delivered in phases from 2026 to 2029, alongside a concurrent NT$16.78 billion allocation for 32 domestic NCSIST Albatross II UAVs. The 75 kg V-BAT Block 5.3 features a heavy-fuel engine, an 18.1 kg payload capacity, over 12 hours of endurance, ViDAR search area coverage up to 3,140 square nautical miles per hour, and GNSS-denied navigation via Hivemind autonomy.

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Taiwan's planned 280-drone purchase exceeds the roughly 250 V-BATs Shield AI had delivered cumulatively to all customers worldwide by late 2024, meaning a single Taiwanese order would be larger than the manufacturer's previous annual delivery rate. (Picture source: U.S. Marine Corps)

As reported by the Liberty Times on August 31, 2026, Taiwan is preparing the largest known procurement of U.S.-made Shield AI V-BAT vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) drones, as the Taiwanese Navy plans to acquire 280 V-BATs under an NT$36.00658 billion ($1.1356 billion) program extending from 2026 through 2029. This order, larger than the roughly 250 V-BATs that Shield AI had cumulatively delivered worldwide by late 2024, also includes 140 control systems and 82 transport vehicles, which produces a procurement ratio of two aircraft per control system and 3.4 aircraft per vehicle. Taiwan plans to receive 40 drones (14.3% of the order) in 2026, 110 (39.3%) in 2027, 64 (22.9%) in 2028, and 66 (23.6%) in 2029. By December 2027, 150 aircraft, or 53.6% of the total, are therefore scheduled to have been received, leaving 130 for 2028 and 2029.

The Taiwanese Navy intends to assign the V-BAT drone to surface warfare groups and littoral combat forces, giving these formations their own runway-independent reconnaissance and targeting capabilities against Chinese forces instead of relying exclusively on shore-based aviation, fixed radar sites, or larger manned assets. The procurement is therefore significant not simply because Taiwan is buying 280 V-BAT UAVs, but because it is buying enough control and transport equipment to distribute them as mobile detachments across a naval and coastal force rather than operate them from one centralized base. The V-BAT, also designated as MQ-35A, is a 75 kg maximum-gross-weight tailsitter measuring 3.8 m across the wings and 2.9 m in height, with a maximum speed of 90 km/h and an operating ceiling of 5,486 m. Its Block 5.3 configuration, introduced in April 2025, replaced the earlier gasoline engine with a 33-hp heavy-fuel engine compatible with JP-5, the aviation fuel commonly carried aboard naval vessels, which simplifies shipboard support.

The same configuration increased the maximum payload from 11.3 kg to 18.1 kg, a gain of 6.8 kg and exactly 60%, while larger fuel tanks pushed endurance beyond 12 hours with an EO/IR payload. That payload increase is operationally significant because 18.1 kg is sufficient to move beyond a single optical turret and accommodate combinations involving communications, radar, navigation, targeting, or electronic intelligence equipment within the V-BAT's available power and weight margins. With a 9.1 kg payload and SATCOM installed, the listed one-way range reaches 648 nmi, equivalent to 1,200 km. This should not be read as a 1,200 km combat radius, because a persistent maritime mission must allocate fuel for outbound transit, time on station, return flight, and reserve, but the figure does show that the airframe can trade loiter time for substantial transit distance.

For shorter-range control, mesh radio supports a line-of-sight distance of 139 km and phased-array communications extend that figure to 180 km, while SATCOM provides a beyond-line-of-sight option. The V-BAT can be assembled and made mission-ready in under 30 minutes by at least two personnel, and vertical recovery requires a footprint of only roughly 4.6 by 4.6 to 4.7 m. Those dimensions allow the aircraft to operate from a ship deck, a coastal road site, or another small cleared area without the runway, catapult, or arresting equipment required by larger fixed-wing UAVs. The sensor configuration gives the V-BAT a broader role than continuous electro-optical observation. Available payloads include EO/IR turrets, synthetic-aperture radar, Automatic Identification System, ViDAR, SATCOM, GNSS anti-jam equipment, M-Code GNSS, laser range finders, laser target designators, and SIGINT-related systems, as the drone can supply up to 600 W of power to its mission payload.

The ViDAR is particularly relevant to maritime surveillance because it uses multiple passive optical sensors to search wide areas instead of limiting the aircraft to the narrow field of view of a single turret. Its listed search coverage reaches 3,140 square nautical miles per hour, equal to roughly 10,770 km² per hour. At that theoretical rate, a three-hour search period corresponds to more than 32,000 km² of scanned area before accounting for overlap, weather, altitude, sensor geometry, or repeated inspection of contacts. Taiwan's requirement also includes a 150 km forward observation or detection figure, placing the UAV well beyond the visual and radar horizon of many surface units that could use its data.

Onboard processing reduces the need to transmit every frame of multiple high-resolution feeds by filtering imagery and sending detections, selected images, tracks, and coordinates, an important consideration when bandwidth is constrained or radio links are being disrupted. In a separate demonstration, the V-BAT searched an area roughly twice the size of Dallas in about 90 minutes while producing imagery of detected people and vehicles, illustrating how automated cueing can now replace continuous manual inspection of one narrow sensor field. For a Taiwanese naval unit, the practical output is a target-quality chain that moves from broad-area search to detection, classification, tracking, and coordinate generation. That role is now expanding toward direct attack after Shield AI and South Korea's LIG Nex1 agreed in January 2026 to integrate the laser-guided L-MDM missile, with released imagery showing a V-BAT carrying as many as four missiles.

Such a configuration would allow one drone to detect and designate a target while another unit, or potentially the same one, carries a limited precision-strike load. Ukraine provides a concrete example of how the V-BAT can be used when GNSS and communications are actively contested rather than merely degraded by distance. The U.S. drone entered battlefield testing there in June 2024 against Russian forces employing extensive GPS jamming and communications interference. During an August 2024 experiment, V-BATs searched for Russian surface-to-air missile positions and transmitted targeting information that was subsequently used for M142 HIMARS engagements. One mission placed a V-BAT roughly 100 km beyond the frontline electronic warfare barrier while searching for a Russian Buk-M1 surface-to-air missile system.

That distance matters because the drone was not being used only as a close reconnaissance asset over friendly positions; it was pushed beyond the main electronic warfare belt to locate a mobile air defense target that could itself threaten larger reconnaissance UAVs. The V-BAT's navigation architecture also includes visual odometry, allowing the unmanned aircraft to estimate its own position without continuous GPS reception. This is directly relevant to targeting because a UAV that detects a Buk launcher but loses confidence in its own position cannot reliably produce coordinates precise enough for a long-range counterstrike. Also, the Hivemind autonomy system includes state estimation, mapping, object tracking, task planning, behavior planning, and motion planning, reducing the amount of continuous manual piloting that has to pass through a potentially jammed radio link. Furthermore, Shield AI demonstrated coordinated multi-V-BAT operations through Hivemind in October 2023 and later standardized four aircraft as a normal V-BAT team.

Applied mathematically to Taiwan's 280-unit requirement, this would permit 70 four-drone teams before accounting for training, maintenance reserves, attrition replacements, and depot cycles. Even if only 70% of the fleet were simultaneously assigned to operational units, that would still leave 196 V-BATs, equivalent to 49 drone teams, with 84 more units available for training, maintenance, and reserve. Existing maritime deployments provide additional evidence for the Taiwan Navy on sortie generation, deck requirements, and operating distance. The V-BAT can conduct automated vertical launch and recovery in winds up to 25 kt and from ships moving at up to 10 kt, while requiring a landing area of roughly 21 to 22 m². It has operated from multiple U.S. Navy ship classes and with all seven U.S. Marine Expeditionary Units, showing that shipboard use has progressed beyond a single vessel or one service experiment.

During June and July 2026, two V-BATs deployed aboard the Italian Coast Guard patrol vessel Dattilo during a Frontex trial in the central Mediterranean and accumulated 150 flight hours across 19 days. Peak combined utilization reached 20 flight hours in one day, equivalent to ten hours per aircraft if divided evenly between the two UAVs. Flights extended to roughly 150 km from the ship, and one search-and-rescue exercise required the drone to locate a small inflatable boat, a contact with a much smaller visual and radar signature than a frigate, destroyer, or merchant vessel. The Royal Netherlands Navy acquired 12 V-BATs, and plans support equipment across eight ships following trials aboard the Rotterdam-class landing ship HNLMS Johan de Witt. The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force received its first V-BAT in December 2025, while Colombia, Romania, Poland, Greece and Argentina have also moved toward actual or planned maritime use.

Taiwan is also buying a second maritime UAV tier at the same time, creating a combined Navy unmanned aircraft investment of NT$52.79 billion ($1.6654 billion) between 2026 and 2029. In addition to the 280 V-BATs, Taiwan is allocating NT$16.78 billion, equivalent to roughly $529.37 million, for 32 NCSIST Albatross II UAVs, eight control stations and 48 transport vehicles. Together, the two programs provide 312 drones, 148 control systems or stations, and 130 transport vehicles. In that case, the V-BAT accounts for 89.7% of the combined inventory, but 68.2% of combined program funding. Conversely, the Albatross II represents only 10.3% of the drones but 31.8% of the funding, showing that Taiwan is buying the two types at materially different quantity and cost levels.

The Albatross II has an endurance of up to 16 hours compared with more than 12 hours for V-BAT, a control range exceeding 300 km, and modular payloads that can include sonobuoy pods or the Chien Feng I attack drone. The organizational ratios are also different. Thirty-two Albatross IIs paired with eight control stations equal four drones per station, while 280 V-BATs paired with 140 control systems equal two drones per system. These ratios indicate that the Albatross II is being procured with a heavier support footprint per air vehicle, while the V-BAT is being bought in much greater numbers for broader distribution. Taiwan's Coast Guard is separately pursuing the acquisition of 12 shipborne V-BATs for NT$1.2 billion ($37.86 million). These acquisitions form only a small part of Taiwan's intended unmanned force, which is planned to reach roughly 210,000 aerial drones and unmanned surface vessels by 2031.

Legislation passed on August 27, 2026, authorized NT$240 billion over six years, with spending capped at NT$40 billion annually through the regular budget process, replacing an earlier NT$210 billion special-funding concept. The authorized categories include coastal surveillance drones, coastal attack drones and one-way attack boats, combining reusable intelligence assets with expendable strike systems. Separate planning has included as many as 1,350 unmanned surface vessels, alongside much larger numbers of FPV, quadcopters, reconnaissance, and kamikaze drones. If 1,350 USVs are counted against the stated 210,000-system objective, they represent only 0.64% of the total, showing that the overwhelming numerical mass will have to come from aerial systems rather than maritime craft.

The 280 V-BATs themselves would represent only 0.13% of a 210,000-system force, but they would occupy a much higher-end endurance and payload tier than the small drones that will make up most of that total. Taiwan has also established a Littoral Combat Command to combine unmanned surface vessels, mobile land-based anti-ship missiles, artillery, and Marine-operated small boats. Within such a structure, the V-BAT can extend the sensor horizon of mobile coastal units without requiring those units to activate their own radars for prolonged periods; the Albatross II provides a longer-endurance layer; and smaller FPV or one-way attack drones provide numerical mass at much shorter ranges.

Taiwan is simultaneously trying to create enough domestic industrial capacity to replace large quantities of unmanned systems during a prolonged conflict with China, with a stated objective of producing 100,000 drones per month by 2030, following lessons drawn from the Ukrainian War. Sustained for 12 months, that rate equals 1.2 million units per year, or an average of 3,288 drones per day. If roughly half of production is intended for export, the theoretical domestic share would still amount to 50,000 drones per month, 600,000 per year, or 1,644 per day. At that output, replacing the entire 210,000-system force numerically would require 3.5 months of domestic production if every unit were comparable, although in practice a 75 kg V-BAT, an FPV drone, and a 1,000 kg unmanned surface vessel have completely different production times, costs, and supply chains.

The industrial objective is therefore principally relevant to smaller systems that can be manufactured at scale, not to high-end UAVs such as V-BAT. Taiwan's drone exports reached roughly $115 million during the first three months of 2026, already exceeding the value exported during all of 2025, indicating that manufacturing expansion is already occurring before the 2030 target. Domestic manufacturers are working across reconnaissance UAVs, FPV systems, one-way attack drones, unmanned surface vessels, and associated components. Thunder Tiger's SeaShark family occupies the maritime segment, and its May 2026 agreement with Shield AI adds Hivemind autonomy through simulation, hardware-in-the-loop testing, and live trials, potentially linking the autonomy architecture used aboard the V-BAT with Taiwanese-produced unmanned vessels.

Written by Jérôme Brahy

Jérôme Brahy is a defense analyst and documentalist at Army Recognition. He specializes in naval modernization, aviation, drones, armored vehicles, and artillery, with a focus on strategic developments in the United States, China, South Korea, Ukraine, Russia, Türkiye, and Belgium. His analyses go beyond the facts, providing context, identifying key actors, and explaining why defense news matters on a global scale.

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