Taiwan Legislative Yuan passed the Act for Strengthening National Defence Autonomy and Developing the Unmanned Vehicle Industry at third reading on 27 August1. The Act directs the central government to budget NT$240 billion over six consecutive years, NT$40 billion a year in principle, with both the total and the annual figure able to rise if they fall short. Third reading is the final legislative stage in Taipei; promulgation by the president is a separate step, and the presidential gazette carried none by 4 September.
That NT$240 billion covers every unmanned domain the Act defines, and the Act defines surface, underwater and ground vehicles alike. Two of the three items on the Taiwan Ministry of National Defense named list are coastal-surveillance and coastal-attack uncrewed aircraft. The small suicide uncrewed boat is the only sea platform among them, and the enacted text nowhere says what its share of the ceiling is. In practice a bidder cannot price against the headline number, because the law never divides it by domain.
The Act also bars mainland Chinese, Hong Kong and Macau manufacturers and teams from procurement under it2. That bar is written against remote-control unmanned aircraft procurement and nothing wider, which means Taipei has legislated the exclusion where the dependency is already documented and left surface and ground buying to ordinary contracting. Britain learned in August what an unaudited component chain costs, when the Telegraph reported that Chinese-made cameras fitted to Royal Marines K3 SCOUT boats were sending traffic to an internet address in China.
The text requires at least three civil-military shared test ranges within one year of commencement, and sets a trusted-supply-chain goal for 20273. Most provisions commence six months after promulgation. The third-reading text had gone for promulgation by 2 September, so the six-month clock has not started running, and the test ranges are dated from a day that has not happened yet.
