Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan passed the Act on Strengthening Defense Autonomy and Developing the Unmanned Vehicles Industry 60–50 on Aug. 27, putting an opposition-written procurement framework into law.[E1] The measure sets a six-year spending principle of NT$240 billion through annual general budgets.[E4] The chamber also rejected the Cabinet’s NT$210 billion special-budget proposal.[E2][E3] Those decisions handed the legislature a recurring budget lever over the drone buildup.[E1][E4]
The new act calls for NT$40 billion a year in principle for six consecutive years.[E4] Those appropriations return through the ordinary budget process, giving lawmakers repeated opportunities to approve or alter spending as technologies and requirements change.[E4] The NT$240 billion figure is a baseline, and additional funding can still be added with legislative approval.[E4] Procurement now runs as a six-year sequence of ordinary budget decisions.[E4]
MND’s shopping list remains focused on domestically produced “low-cost, high-performance” unmanned systems.[E5] The act explicitly covers coastal attack drones, coastal reconnaissance drones and small suicide unmanned surface vehicles.[E5] Those same three categories appeared in the Cabinet’s earlier special-budget plan, which sought up to NT$210 billion from August 2026 through December 2031.[E3] The military’s priority classes therefore survived the financing rewrite.[E3][E5]
Industrial policy sits inside the procurement law. MOEA, working with MND, must define what qualifies as indigenous production and what counts as a “trustworthy supply chain.”[E6] The ministry must also establish at least three test sites within one year for flight controls, anti-jamming systems and combat-readiness testing.[E6] A Cabinet-level national committee is to coordinate unmanned-vehicle industrial policy, tying purchasing rules to the domestic manufacturing base.[E6]
That division of labor assigns different choke points to different institutions. MND chooses and trains the military systems; MOEA defines domestic eligibility and supply-chain trust; the legislature revisits the money each year.[E4][E5][E6] The law builds procurement, accreditation, testing and industrial planning into one recurring machinery.[E6] Contractors will compete inside a rulebook whose definitions and test infrastructure are now statutory implementation tasks.[E6]
The Legislative Yuan’s roll-call gazette had not been published by the edition freeze. The public vote count available for the act was the 60–50 tally carried by CNA and Focus Taiwan.[E1] The formal gazette citation therefore remains open. The reported division stands on the published CNA record until that roll appears.[E1]
Cabinet officials objected to the outcome and said they would work through the new funding channel.[E7] MND expressed “regret” that the special-budget proposal failed, warning that the result could hamper acquisition of key combat capabilities within the shortest possible time.[E7] Cabinet spokesperson Michelle Lee said the government would “do its utmost” to plan procurement budgets and acquire critical capabilities quickly.[E7] Taipei’s drone program now has a six-year shopping list, an industrial rulebook and a recurring appointment with the legislature.[E4][E5][E6]