Taiwan Drone Weekly

Company Profiles

Carbon-Based Technology: What Drone Buyers Should Know About Taiwan's Non-Red Composite Supply Chain

Carbon-Based Technology builds composite airframes in-house, from resin to final assembly, and pitches buyers on a single supplier accountable for material provenance, structural quality, and assembly. How much of that pitch actually holds up? TaiwanDrones asked CEO Yu Pei-wen to walk through material sourcing, certification timelines, and what "non-red" actually carries in the US, EU, Japanese, and Indian markets — Carbon-Based is one of the few Taiwan suppliers willing to lay out those details for scrutiny.

Sylvaine Li · Sep 11, 2026

Analysis

Beyond Ukraine and the US: Where Taiwan's Drone Demand Comes From Next

Taiwan exported more drones in the first half of 2026 than in all of 2025, but DSET's latest report finds no stable foreign government procurement behind the surge. We screen the markets beyond the Ukraine corridor and the US where demand for non-Chinese components is created by law, why India is first among them, and the two constraints Taiwanese suppliers will face everywhere they go.

Sylvaine Li · Sep 9, 2026

Industry News

Taiwan Drones Weekly News Roundup: August 31 - September 6, 2026

This was the week Taiwan's drone advantage got priced by three different governments in three different currencies. Washington set the exchange rate first: a 15% tariff on Taiwanese drones took effect September 3, against a 100% rate for China's heaviest, most sensitive hardware. Taipei tried to spend into that advantage with a $4.6 billion supplementary defense budget stacked with coastal drones and unmanned boats, while two separate reports, one from a government-funded think tank and one from CommonWealth's own reporting, made the same point from different angles: the more the export numbers climb, the more visible it becomes that the batteries and magnets inside those drones are still largely Chinese. Layer in a US-Taiwan defense industry piece on what "China-free" autonomy actually requires, plus Taipei's opening bid to export the regulatory playbook itself through drone diplomacy, and the throughline is less a single story than the same tension read at three altitudes: what Washington will pay for, what Taipei is funding, and what Taiwan hasn't finished building yet. Here's the week.

Sylvaine Li · Sep 6, 2026

Analysis

What Taiwan's Counter-Drone Audit Reveals About Its Own Datalink Resilience

An audit found Taiwan's counter-drone system lacks effective detection and countermeasure capability against fiber-optic and some AI-autonomous drones, and can't see China's newest frequencies either. The finding raises a sharper question about Taiwan's own drone datalinks — and how few Taiwan suppliers publicly document both COFDM capability and a non-red supply chain, HiDes among them.

Sylvaine Li · Sep 4, 2026

Procurement Watch

Which Factory Made This Lot? What the Unimicron Investigation Means for PCB Buyers

Taoyuan prosecutors raided Unimicron, a board supplier to Nvidia and Intel, on suspicion that PCBs made at its China plants were shipped to Taiwan and relabeled. Unlike the Hang Jian case, the company has real production lines in Taiwan. The allegation is about which lines a given lot came from, and no factory visit settles that. What an origin declaration has to prove when a supplier builds on both sides of the Strait, who pays when it is wrong, and what to write into the purchase order.

Sylvaine Li · Sep 3, 2026

Industry News

Taiwan Drones Weekly News Roundup: August 24 - 30, 2026

Taiwan's drone-funding fight finally produced a number this week: NT$240 billion, six years, and a KMT-authored law that beat the Cabinet's own version to the finish line. The ink was barely dry before the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the agency now responsible for administering it, said the bill would slow it down. Layer in an academic's case for regulatory reform and a Washington argument that Taipei is counting the wrong thing, and the throughline is clear: Taiwan has decided how much to spend on drones and is only now working out how it will build and use them. Thunder Tiger, unbothered by any of it, kept selling into the Philippines. Here's the week.

Sylvaine Li · Aug 30, 2026

Procurement Watch

Announcing: Compliance Guides for US and EU Drone Rules

We have published a set of guides covering the FCC Covered List, NDAA Sections 848 and 889, Blue UAS, the Section 232 tariffs, and EU content rules under SAFE and EDIP. Each one explains what the rule tests, who it binds, and whether a Taiwanese supplier can satisfy it. Written for suppliers and for the buyers sourcing from them.

Sylvaine Li · Aug 29, 2026

Procurement Watch

Taiwan's "Non-Red" Advantage Does Not Apply to the Rule That Now Governs US Market Access

The FCC's Covered List asks where a drone or component was made, not whether it contains Chinese parts. On that test Taiwan fails alongside Switzerland and, in one case, a California company. What Taiwan's supply-chain positioning actually buys, which rules it applies to, and why Blue UAS listing is now a commercial deadline rather than a defense aspiration.

Sylvaine Li · Aug 27, 2026

Company Profiles

Buying a Non-Red Drone Battery From Taiwan: What E-CURRENT's Bill of Materials Actually Proves

TaiwanDrones interviewed E-CURRENT, a Taiwan Tier-1 (T1) non-red drone battery supplier, for a full bill-of-materials breakdown, material by material, including the one input the company admits it hasn't solved and the cost premium it says is steeper than the industry line.

Sylvaine Li · Aug 27, 2026

Policy & Regulation

Taiwan Has No Rare Earth Reserves. Can It Still Build a Magnet Supply Chain?

ITRI plans to transfer neodymium and dysprosium refining technology to private industry this year, and a national recycling cluster is forming around it. Taiwan still has zero domestic rare earth reserves. Here's why that gap may be more addressable than it looks — and what it means for drone motor magnets specifically.

Sylvaine Li · Aug 24, 2026