Taiwan, Ukraine, and the US Are Building a Drone Chain Beijing Can't Touch

Taiwan shipped 139,000 drones in the first three months of 2026, more than it exported in all of the previous year. Most were destined for Ukraine, routed through Poland and the Czech Republic. The numbers tell a story of a small island rapidly becoming indispensable to democratic defense. They also conceal a structural vulnerability: the same drones run on Chinese battery cells and motors.

That contradiction framed the fourth panel of DSET's 2026 Supply Chain Resilience Summit in Taipei, where defense researchers, industry executives, and military veterans from Taiwan, the United States, and Ukraine spent ninety minutes working through how to fix it.

The bluntest assessment came from Cathy Fang, Policy Analyst of the National Security Program at DSET and the session's moderator, who laid out the structural bind facing Taiwan's drone industry. Domestic procurement is stalled by budget uncertainty. Access to foreign government markets remains limited. And despite rapid export growth, critical components including battery cells, motors, and key electronics still flow from China.

The exposure is not theoretical. Gene Su, President of Thunder Tiger, noted that roughly 90 percent of global motor production originates in China. His response has been to establish a "Made in USA" motor production line in Ohio, an expensive and deliberate workaround that underscores just how deep the dependency runs. Artur Savchii of Ukraine's Snake Island Institute put the problem in starker terms: over 95 percent of Ukrainian drone manufacturers currently rely on Chinese components, and about 77 percent want to eliminate that reliance. The demand for alternatives in battery cells, PCBs, chips, and carbon fiber is real, and Taiwan is well-positioned to fill it.

The panel converged on a clear division of labor. Taiwan brings manufacturing capacity, microelectronics precision, and increasingly certified, combat-ready platforms. Ukraine brings something harder to replicate: four years of continuous, high-intensity drone warfare.

Savchii described Ukraine's defense technology sector as generating $12 billion in output in 2025, producing over four million drones annually, and operating procurement mechanisms that would be unfamiliar to most Western defense bureaucracies. The Brave1 innovation fund, the e-points battlefield procurement system, and an "80/20" acquisition model allocating 80 percent toward proven technology and 20 percent reserved for untested startups together reflect a system optimized for speed and iteration rather than conventional procurement cycles.

Andrii Ordynovych, Director for Strategic Support and Development at the Ukrainian Freedom Fund and a former defense and military attaché at Ukraine's US embassy, put it more plainly. Ukraine's battle-tested drone designs, operational tactics, and live testing environments represent a knowledge base that no exercise or simulation can replicate. His pointed caveat for Taiwan: many drones that perform well on test ranges do not survive contact with an adversary who is actively trying to destroy them.

If there was a single theme that recurred across the panel, it was scale. High-end, precision systems have their place, but in a conflict defined by mass drone deployment, the ability to absorb losses and sustain volume may matter more than any individual platform's capabilities.

Ordynovych framed this in terms of interceptor defense: when using low-cost drones to counter enemy unmanned systems, the quantity you can field determines whether your defense holds. He recommended Taiwan develop battlefield management software along the lines of Ukraine's DELTA system, which processes real-time data to maintain a common operational picture across dispersed units. His broader message was that resilience is built on modular inventory, rapid innovation cycles, and a whole-of-society commitment, not on any single platform or partnership.

Molly Campbell, Research Assistant at CNAS's Defense Program, made a similar argument from a different angle. Co-authored with program director Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn, her report Taiwan's Hellscape: Rethinking Asymmetric Defense proposes a four-layered drone defense of the Taiwan Strait beginning roughly 80 kilometers offshore. The strategy deploys long-range drones, unmanned surface and undersea vehicles, naval mines, and FPV drones to attrit Chinese landing forces before they reach the beach, with the logic of attrition by volume rather than precision engagement.

Campbell was direct about a risk Taiwan's planners may be underweighting: over-reliance on the United States. With Washington's attention recently pulled toward the Middle East, the pipeline from American defense industry is less predictable than Taiwan might assume. Ukraine and European partners, she argued, offer diversification that is now strategically necessary rather than merely convenient.

Alexander Chang, Managing Director for East Asia at Anduril Industries, reported a concrete expansion of his company's Taiwan footprint over the past year: 15 new local suppliers, a 15-fold increase in direct procurement, and eight locally hired staff. Anduril's Lattice command-and-control platform, which integrates Anduril and third-party sensor data to shorten kill chains, has been linked into existing Taiwanese systems.

Chang's strategic framing was unambiguous: the goal is to make Taiwan's defenses so advanced that China calculates the cost of invasion as prohibitive. On procurement timelines, he noted that Anduril can deliver complete systems within 13 months of a signed contract, a figure clearly calibrated against the question of whether American industry can move fast enough to matter.

Thunder Tiger's Su detailed a parallel trajectory. His company's Overkill drone earned Blue UAS certification last October, clearing it for US government procurement, and the firm ranked among the top eleven in the first phase of the US Drone Dominance Program. Su attributed Thunder Tiger's engineering agility in part to an unconventional materials decision: borrowing aluminum alloy stamping technology from the automotive industry to replace the slower composite fabrication methods standard in aerospace. A decade of supply-chain development now spans motors, control systems, AI, and anti-jamming, with partners in the US, Israel, and Ukraine.

Fang outlined what a more durable partnership architecture would look like across three bilateral tracks. With the United States, the priority is expanding Taiwanese manufacturers on the Blue UAS List and implementing the co-production requirements in the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act. With Ukraine, the focus shifts to deepening supply-chain integration and moving toward joint production of long-range and interceptor drones. With Europe, the goal is to formalize existing cooperation through EU mechanisms and expand joint R&D.

Ordynovych added a practical bridge between Taiwan and Ukraine that does not require formal diplomatic ties: business-to-business partnerships and NGO linkages. Given that the two sides lack official relations, he argued these channels represent the fastest route to meaningful exchange. His summary of Ukraine's own position, "outnumbered, but undeterred," landed as both a description and a model.

The summit panel did not resolve the tensions it surfaced. Taiwan's drone industry is growing faster than its supply chain is being de-risked, and the window between demand and dependency remains wide open. But the range of voices in the room, from American defense companies and Ukrainian veterans to Taiwanese manufacturers and Washington-based researchers, suggested that the architecture of a solution is at least visible, even if the political will to build it quickly enough is still being tested. （Related： From Ukraine to Taiwan: Experts Reveal How Blockade Will Wipe Out Fuel Reserves in Weeks ｜ Latest ）