Taiwan drone bill: US lawmaker warns time is short

US Republican lawmaker Young Kim urged Taiwan on Friday to pass a comprehensive drone spending bill, warning during a congressional visit to Taipei that "time is short" as the island faces the threat of a potential Chinese attack.

Kim spoke at the Presidential Office, where a bipartisan US congressional delegation met President Lai Ching-te. She said the wars over Ukraine and Iran showed Taiwan needed to buy and build drones at a large scale.

Lai's government wants to allocate up to NT$210 billion, or $6.5 billion, over more than five years for Taiwan-made unmanned vehicles, including coastal surveillance, attack and surface drones. The proposal is part of a broader push to develop smaller, more mobile weapons for asymmetric warfare.

Taiwan's main opposition Kuomintang, which favours closer ties with China, has proposed NT$240 billion in spending over six years. The KMT wants to cap the spending at NT$40 billion a year and include it in the annual budget.

Lai told the US delegation that Taiwan was committed to further increasing its military budget and strengthening whole-of-society defence resilience. His government has vowed under US pressure to raise defence spending to five percent of GDP by 2030.

In May, the KMT and the Taiwan People's Party passed a $25 billion special defence budget, cutting by a third the amount sought by Lai's Democratic Progressive Party. The opposition removed about $15 billion that the government had wanted to use for domestic drone procurement and other defence efforts.

Kim called passage of the $25 billion defence bill a major achievement but said more steps were needed. "The more concrete steps that Taiwan takes, the more the United States can do to support Taiwan," she said.

China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has threatened to use force to seize it. Taiwan is a relatively new player in the drone industry and aims to have monthly production capacity of 100,000 drones by 2030, compared with an earlier target of 15,000 by 2028.