00:01Hundreds of kilometers of range, hours of flight time.
00:05These are the basic specifications for Anduril's LTS-600M drone platform
00:09that Taiwan's military is training soldiers to use.
00:11When we started training, we started training.
00:15Our training is about two days or ten days.
00:18I think the training is very complicated.
00:21As you can see, you can create a plane and a plane.
00:31The first batch of U.S.-made Altius drones arrived in Taiwan last August,
00:36with training on these loitering munitions starting in December.
00:38Loitering munitions are suicide drones that stay in an area
00:41until identifying a target and diving down to hit it.
00:44Altius' website also lists other use cases, like reconnaissance,
00:47electronic warfare, and more.
00:49The first one may be able to use.
01:09The drones are a sign of growing investment in autonomous weapons platforms,
01:13a key pillar of Taiwan's asymmetric defense strategy.
01:16But it has not all been smooth sailing.
01:17Local media reports from early in February suggested the drone's performance was below expectations,
01:23which the Defense Ministry rejected.
01:25And the first batch of the 600M drones was just 291 units,
01:28far short of the thousands that the military has publicly said is necessary.
01:32President Lai Qingda's proposed special defense budget has earmarked billions of dollars for more drones,
01:37but that bill remains stalled in the legislature.
01:39Drawing on lessons from the war in Ukraine,
01:42drones like the Altius 600M are expected to be an important part of Taiwan's security strategy and planning.
01:47Hank Hsu and Larry Siano for Taiwan Plus.
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