Taiwan working on autonomous drone swarms to counter China’s increasingly aggressive grey-zone military tactics — island has already completed flight simulations, now working towards flight trials over maritime areas

Taiwan’s Ocean Affairs Council is working on an autonomous system that would allow drone fleets to coordinate and execute missions without human intervention in response to “grey-zone” activities carried out by China. According to the South China Morning Post, the council is working with the National Cheng Kung University, which has already completed simultaneous flight simulations of two drone fleets, with each fleet comprising 10 units. This is already the second step of the process, which has shifted from individual aircraft control to the coordination of two drone detachments.

This project is designed to help Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration (CGA) to counter Beijing’s grey-zone tactics in the waters surrounding the island nation. There have already been instances of civilian Chinese ships damaging undersea cables that Taipei relies on, with the CGA increasing its defensive patrols around 24 undersea cables and closely monitoring nearly a hundred China-linked boats. Despite that, Chinese “research vessels” continue to loiter over Taiwan-U.S. undersea cables, mimicking the activities of Russian trawlers in the Atlantic.