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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 Taipei has also received its first shipment of U.S.-made V-BAT drones. 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. “The next stage will involve hardware-in-the-loop testing, prototype integration and flight trials over actual maritime areas to assess reliability under different sea and weather conditions,” the council said. The researchers programmed the drones to have a minimum separation of 100 feet in 3D space, and they’re also incorporating leader-follower formation flying and dynamic obstacle avoidance. This should allow them to respond to quickly changing conditions out in the open sea and even deal with unexpected hazards. More than that, the autonomous system Taipei is working on would let different types of drones coordinate their movements, divide tasks, and plan routes, primarily for maritime surveillance. This is especially important as it would allow them to use different types of drones to accomplish various missions, much like how different air forces use different aircraft types. The project is currently focusing on three Western-made drones — the Jump 20, V-BAT, and Flexrotor. In fact, the Ocean Affairs Council just received the V-BAT, a VTOL drone built by U.S. defense firm Shield AI. This unit can take off vertically from the relatively constrained deck space of non-aircraft carrier ships and offers an endurance of over 12 hours for extended missions, making it ideal for the CGA, as it would not need to make major renovations to its ships to accommodate these drones while extending their reach. Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds. Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.
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