Taiwan To Assign Each Corps-Sized Army Theater Command Its Own Drone Unit, No Indication That Reserve Units Will Also Operate Drones
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Recent reports indicate that the Taiwanese army will establish a uncrewed aircraft/drone unit for each of the army’s five corps-sized theater commands. While Taiwan is undertaking the large-scale procurement of various types of uncrewed aircraft, there are consequential uncertainties about not only the speed at which this capability set can be developed and deployed, but also the question of scale. Scale refers not only to the total number of uncrewed aircraft-turned-munitions that Taiwan will procure, but also the number of trained operators and technicians that will be deployed across the Taiwanese army and the rest of the Taiwanese military more generally. As things stand, it is not yet clear how widely the Taiwanese army intends to deploy armed uncrewed aircraft/drones across its active duty and reserve units.
The advent of fairly inexpensive armed multirotor drones and armed fixed-wing loitering strike drones enables a profound devolution of firepower down to smaller units. There is a case to be made that the Taiwanese army, which is not a field army that intends to advance dozens, let alone hundreds, of kilometers into enemy-held territory in the manner of a continental army, is very well-positioned to devolve such newly available forms of firepower down to a much lower level than most armies. That is, while there is a case for the allocation of a larger grouping of armed uncrewed level to a corps-level command, each Taiwanese brigade should also be assigned a battalion-sized formation to operate armed drones of various types and that even Taiwanese infantry battalions should be assigned at least a platoon, if not an undersized company, of personnel to operate armed drones of various types. More generally, Taiwan’s reserves constitute a very large pool of manpower that can be mobilized. Should Taiwan reform its reserve system along the lines of what was described in a recent post, the Taiwanese army will be able to employ many thousands of armed uncrewed aircraft-turned-munitions per day in the event of a Chinese amphibious landing on the island of Taiwan.