IN Brief:
- NCSIST has opened a Minxiong campus for military drone research, testing, verification, and production.
- An adjacent NT$6.9 billion industrial park is planned to add factories, laboratories, flight testing, and supplier capacity by 2028.
- Taiwan reported NT$12.9 billion of drone output in 2025 as government investment pushes the sector towards larger scale domestic production.
Taiwan has opened a new National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology campus in Minxiong, Chiayi County, alongside construction of an aerospace and drone industrial park intended to expand domestic capacity for military uncrewed systems.
The NCSIST campus represents more than NT$1.1 billion of investment in an integrated drone test hangar, research facilities, an R&D building, and supporting infrastructure. It is intended to bring military drone research, testing, verification, and production into a single site, shortening the path between prototype work and industrial manufacture. The adjoining industrial park carries a separate investment of almost NT$6.9 billion and is scheduled for completion in 2028.
Plans for the park include production buildings, experimental facilities, flight test space, and further research capacity. Local development plans envisage about 100 companies operating in the cluster, creating around 1,200 jobs and annual output of approximately NT$8 billion once the site is established. The model is based on connecting state backed defence research with a larger supplier base able to support repeatable manufacture rather than isolated prototype activity.
The technical infrastructure reflects that objective. Facilities at Minxiong support work on propulsion, structural analysis, and environmental resistance, while test capabilities include laser tracking, ultrasonic damage detection, vibration testing, and simulation using virtual reality and artificial intelligence. Those functions cover several of the engineering stages that determine whether an uncrewed aircraft can move from demonstration into a system that can be manufactured, accepted, and supported in quantity.
Taiwan is already increasing the scale of its wider drone sector. Government figures put domestic drone output at NT$12.9 billion in 2025, more than 2.5 times the previous year, with more than 267 companies involved in systems integration and key component manufacturing. The Ministry of Economic Affairs is expected to invest NT$44.2 billion between 2025 and 2030 in strengthening domestic research and production, while a proposed supplementary defence budget of almost NT$60 billion includes procurement intended to support local unmanned system capacity.
The expansion draws on Taiwan’s established semiconductor, information and communications technology, and precision manufacturing base. Military drones depend on airframes and propulsion, but also on sensors, processors, radios, navigation hardware, power systems, software, datalinks, and test equipment. Increasing output therefore requires coordination across industries with different qualification cycles, security requirements, and component risks rather than simply adding final assembly lines.
Government policy is also aimed at reducing dependence on Chinese origin components in sensitive systems, increasing the importance of domestic or trusted suppliers for electronics, communications hardware, and control equipment. That creates a qualification burden as well as a sourcing opportunity. Replacing an imported component with a local alternative can require new environmental, electromagnetic, software, and flight testing before the finished aircraft returns to an approved configuration, making the test infrastructure at Minxiong part of the supply chain strategy rather than a separate research asset.
The production challenge is already visible in Taiwan’s procurement activity. The armed forces have been adding imported and domestic uncrewed systems while local companies develop navigation, autonomy, and counter-UAS technologies. A recent NT$26.9 billion procurement for more than 2,000 ALTIUS systems creates a long duration requirement for imported reconnaissance and loitering munition aircraft, while domestic programmes are being pushed towards larger volumes and more resilient local support. The Minxiong facilities add test, integration, and manufacturing infrastructure around those parallel procurement and development programmes.
Chiayi is also becoming a geographically concentrated development base. The Minxiong campus sits alongside the Asia UAV AI Innovation Application R&D Center in Taibao and a coastal unmanned vehicle test area in Budai. Concentrating laboratories, flight testing, systems integration, and future production capacity within the same county can reduce some engineering delays, particularly when hardware changes must be validated against software, navigation, communications, and environmental requirements.
Bringing facilities together does not remove the production disciplines required for military systems. Approved designs, traceable components, stable orders, skilled staff, configuration control, and repeatable acceptance testing remain necessary if suppliers are to move beyond prototype batches. Taiwan’s stated objective of progressing from component supply towards complete systems therefore places substantial weight on quality assurance and manufacturing control as well as research performance.
The 2028 completion target for the industrial park provides a timetable for the next phase. NCSIST has brought the state research and test campus into service; progress will now depend on supplier occupancy, production investment, and the conversion of planned defence demand into qualified systems delivered at the volumes Taiwan is seeking.
