Taiwan Drones Weekly News Roundup: October 12 - 18, 2026

This week US defense firms agreed to move some production into Taiwan instead of only selling finished systems. The Coast Guard's first drone-boat order will be partly built by a Taiwanese partner, and Kratos said it is seeking US approval to have its jet-powered strike drone assembled in Taiwan. Last week the Coast Guard's showcase platforms were bought complete from US makers. This week's deals give Taiwanese firms part of the build, though none says how much. In the other direction, Thunder Tiger finished delivering its first Drone Dominance order to the Pentagon and signed a co-production framework with AeroVironment at AUSA. At home, a Taiwanese firm won a joint government contract for training drones, and ITRI reported progress on a battery cathode for drones. Here's the week.

1. Coast Guard orders MARTAC Devil Ray boats, partly built in Taiwan, and takes its first V-BAT

Janes — Oct. 13, 2026 · Read article · Naval News — Oct. 13, 2026 · Read article

MARTAC said on October 13 that Taiwan's Coast Guard Administration is buying an undisclosed number of its Devil Ray T24 uncrewed surface vessels. Some will be built at a partner facility in Edgewater, Florida, and the rest by Confucian, MARTAC's Taiwanese partner. The company gave no contract value, delivery schedule or production split. The deal grew out of a three-way memorandum MARTAC signed with NCSIST and Confucian at TADTE in September 2025, and company specifications put the T24 at 8.4 meters, 50 knots burst speed, an 816-kilogram payload and up to 600 nautical miles of range. Confucian CEO James Lee called it the agency's first uncrewed surface vessel program and said MARTAC's willingness to co-produce in Taiwan was a main reason it was chosen. The Coast Guard does already hold MARTAC's smaller M18, which it showed at the National Day rehearsal covered in last week's roundup and which is still in training. In the same week Shield AI said it delivered the first of 12 V-BAT drones under the Coast Guard's shipborne UAV program, which it won in July with AIDC; AIDC will handle local maintenance and training. Both systems were shown to Ocean Affairs Council Minister Kuan Bi-ling and National Security Council Secretary General Joseph Wu at Taipei Port on October 7. The Taiwanese share of the order depends on how many Devil Rays Confucian builds, and MARTAC has not said.

2. Kratos seeks US approval to build the Mighty Hornet IV in Taiwan

Taipei Times — Oct. 17, 2026 · Read article

Steve Fendley, president of Kratos' uncrewed systems division, told the Taipei Times the company is seeking US government authorization for Taiwan to produce the Mighty Hornet IV, the jet-powered one-way strike drone it developed with NCSIST. He spoke after the drone's flight certification tests at a facility in southern Taiwan; the report gives no test date or results. Kratos supplies the airframe, derived from its Firejet target drone, and NCSIST designed the sensors, navigation, electronic warfare suite and warhead. Fendley said the transfer would come in stages. Kratos would first ship airframes that Taiwan fits with mission systems and payload, then supply kits for NCSIST to assemble, and finally seek State Department technology transfer licenses for full assembly lines in Taiwan. He put the unit price at US$500,000 and top speed at Mach 0.7 to 0.85, and said dozens of countries had asked about the drone, seven of them with budgets allotted or price requests made. He also said the US government could order from Taiwan if NCSIST develops mass production. Each step after the first needs US export licenses, and he gave no dates. The two sides first validated the Taiwanese payload at Kratos' Oklahoma City site in February.

3. Thunder Tiger delivers its first Drone Dominance order and signs with AeroVironment

中央社 (CNA) — Oct. 16, 2026 · Read article · AeroVironment — Oct. 14, 2026 · Read release

Thunder Tiger said on October 16 that all 1,520 drones in its first Drone Dominance Program order have been delivered and accepted. The order itself was reported in July, after its team placed 11th in Phase 1. The team pairs Thunder Tiger, which handles development and production, with Taiwan's Rehfeldt Group, which CNA says has long ties to Taiwan's defense units, and US-based Farage Precision, which manages the US military relationship and field feedback. At AUSA the team showed a 10-inch FPV drone built for the program, which Thunder Tiger says uses only Blue UAS-certified or NDAA-compliant components. It is now pursuing Phases 3 and 4. At the same show, Thunder Tiger and AeroVironment signed a memorandum to evaluate mounting a launcher for multiple Switchblade rounds on Thunder Tiger's uncrewed surface vessel, along with other Switchblade integrations on its surface and ground platforms, and to explore co-producing unmanned aircraft in Taiwan. The memorandum names no product, volume or date. Separately, Shield AI published a case study of its July Hivemind demonstration on Thunder Tiger's SeaShark boats. It adds a company simulation in which five autonomous boats covered 50 nautical miles against 6 for fixed patrols at the same identification rate. That figure comes from Shield AI's own modeling, not a field test.

4. The Wall Street Journal counts the US-Taiwan drone deals

The Wall Street Journal — Oct. 2026 · Read article · 今周刊 (Business Today) — Oct. 8, 2026 · Read article

The Wall Street Journal counted at least 13 deals between US defense firms or startups and Taiwanese hardware companies since September 2025, aimed at a drone supply chain without Chinese parts, and reported that Anduril's drone contracts with Taipei have passed US$1 billion. That count mixes signed orders with memorandums like the AeroVironment one above, which commit no one to buy. A sourcing share says more about what Taiwanese suppliers are actually selling. Shield AI co-founder Brandon Tseng told reporters in Taipei on October 2 that about 16 percent of the V-BAT airframe now comes from Taiwan, up from under 1 percent two years ago, and that the company is aiming for 25 percent. Business Today reports that the current share is mostly PCB assembly and other electronic components, with composites named as the next area to grow. Tseng said Shield AI's supply chain lead gives new vendors test parts to build first and judges them on quality, which gives smaller Taiwanese suppliers a way to qualify.

5. Myson Century subsidiary wins the training-drone line of a joint government contract

中央社 (CNA) — Oct. 16, 2026 · Read article

Myson Century's subsidiary Yong-Sheng Electronic signed on October 16 for the training-drone item in a joint supply contract that Bank of Taiwan's procurement department ran on behalf of the Interior Ministry and eight other ministries and agencies. The full contract carries a budget of about NT$1.05 billion. For Yong-Sheng's item, agencies estimate demand at 3,894 training drones worth about NT$132 million. Under a joint supply contract, government agencies, schools and state-owned firms order as their needs arise, so these are estimates and not a firm order. Myson, an IC design company that has moved into flight control and edge computing, calls this its entry into public-sector drone sales. CNA does not report the contract's other items or who won them, which would show how the rest of the NT$1.05 billion is split.

6. ITRI and eJoule test a longer-life nickel cathode aimed at drone batteries

工業技術研究院 (ITRI) — Oct. 15, 2026 · Read release

ITRI said it is working with eJoule (壹久科技), a cathode material maker with operations in Taiwan and the US, to bring single-crystal mid- and high-nickel NMC cathodes to market for drones, robots, EVs and energy storage. eJoule supplies the material, made with a process it calls Dynamic Crystallization that forms single-crystal particles directly from solution and skips the conventional precursor (pCAM) step. ITRI designed cells around the material and ran rate and cycle-life tests. It reports cycle life approaching that of lithium iron phosphate cells and better safety than conventional NMC, but the release gives no figures, cell format or production plan. Skipping the precursor step matters because Chinese producers dominate precursor production. Our August 31 - September 6 roundup covered reporting that the batteries in Taiwan's drones still depend largely on Chinese materials.

That's the week. Watch for the Devil Ray production split between Florida and Taiwan, whether Kratos gets its export licenses, and Thunder Tiger's results in Drone Dominance Phases 3 and 4.