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​Taiwan’s private drone industry has been gaining momentum, not only domestically but also on the global stage. Taichung-based Thunder Tiger recently unveiled a new low-cost drone designed for mass production. TaiwanPlus spoke with the company’s chief strategy officer, Tony Chang, to find out how Taiwan is working to strengthen its drone supply chain and what impact the latest special defense budget could have on those efforts.

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00:00The Papa Delta, which is also known as the Iron Triangle Drone, is designed to
00:05be low-cost and mass-producible. What inspired this product and what gap do
00:10you think you're filling in the modern warfare? Right now, we are
00:14spending a lot of money if we keep developing or keep using those couple
00:17million-dollar weapons. So that's why, you know, there's a need for the low-cost
00:23weapon, which is, you know, what we are here for the drone industry.
00:27Drone seems to be now is one of the lower-cost options here. But when you
00:32look at the low-cost, you know, you've got to look at the other hand as well. How
00:35fast can you produce that? That's the other key. The Papa Delta is coming from that
00:40concept. So WeFunderTiger actually has an aluminum technology. We also have a
00:45press technology that we make our USB already. So we already invest in our
00:50infrastructure that we can basically, I mean, you probably know this, for our USB,
00:54we can stamp out the hog within one giant press. So we see that actually we can
00:59mass-production this very quickly and easily and also very cost-effective.
01:05So we know ThunderTiger is currently the only Taiwanese drone company that has
01:09ever received the Blue UAS certification. Can you explain why this
01:15certification matters, not just for the developers, but also customers?
01:18The significance of the Blue UAS is because it's basically signaling, basically telling
01:23everybody that anyone in DOD or U.S. government can procure this product without
01:31much application. We let DOD take apart our drone and they cover everything, they
01:38take apart everything, make sure they are not from China and all that thing. So they
01:41already go through those process. And at the end, they approve it so they give us a
01:45blue UAS stamp. And I think that's very significant for us to go into the U.S.
01:50market because, I mean, we've got a DOD technical endorsement or certification. So I
01:55think it's going to be very helpful when we try to, you know, push this technology
01:59over Europe or elsewhere, you know.
02:02Taiwan's latest special defense budget bill does not include funding for domestic
02:07drone production. What do you think could be the impact on a drone company like
02:12Thunder Tiger and also the broader drone industry in Taiwan?
02:15I think obviously, you know, you know, it's a disappointment that, you know, it didn't
02:20get included, but, you know, and I, that's obviously very, you know, I think significant
02:24impact on the industry overall. There's a lot of company here that we do a lot of production
02:30in Taiwan and hoping this thing will go through it. If you look at the U.S., you know, you
02:36have
02:36noticed though, in December, they came up with this thing called drone dominance program, which
02:41is directly under DOW. It's a special budget or whatever. So the whole idea for them is
02:46they're also trying to grow the domestic manufacturers. So they, you know, they cut out this thing and
02:54then they set all the criteria and then they try to encourage people to apply. So I'm hoping
02:58that eventually, you know, the government, we will have something that can help the industry
03:02because I do believe that we do need our domestic, you know, and, you know, because I think that's
03:08just the way how it needs to happen.
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