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As China looms, Taiwan makes more drones for defense and the US military

18 June 2026 at 22:21

Taiwan’s existence as a self-governing democracy may depend heavily on having enough military drones to discourage any attempted invasion by China’s military. As the Taiwanese government aims to boost domestic production of military drones and Taiwanese citizens sign up for drone flight training, Taiwanese companies are forming international partnerships to sell more drones to the US military and other overseas buyers.

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense proposed a special budget that would spend $6.6 billion over six years on buying drones made in Taiwan, according to the Central News Agency that represents the national news service of Taiwan. Presented on June 18, the budget proposal would allow the government to buy more than 208,000 coastal attack drones, along with more than 1,400 coastal reconnaissance drones and 1,320 uncrewed surface vessels, between 2026 and 2031.

That would be a significant boost to the Taiwanese military arsenal that currently includes just 5,000 US-made attack drones and domestically produced drones, according to Resilience Media. During military exercises in early June, Taiwanese soldiers fired Altius-600 loitering munition drones—made by a subsidiary of the US military technology company Anduril Industries—from towed flatbed launchers to strike offshore targets, according to USNI News. In another exercise earlier this year, Taiwanese Marines used Taiwan-made drones to similarly strike targets at sea.

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Cheap Iranian drone downed $25 million US Army helicopter—maybe by chance

10 June 2026 at 18:04

A US Army helicopter gunship was apparently struck by an Iranian Shahed drone before going down near the Strait of Hormuz—but it's unclear whether the one-way attack drone was deliberately aimed or achieved more of a lucky accidental strike.

Axios correspondent Barak Ravid first reported an unnamed US government official’s comments that an Iranian drone had hit the US Army AH-64 Apache helicopter before the latter went down on June 8. The New York Times later confirmed that reporting through more anonymous US officials, including one official who said US military investigators were still evaluating whether the Iranian drone strike on the helicopter was intentional or accidental.

Iran has fired thousands of such Shahed drones against a wide range of military and civilian targets in the Gulf region since February 28, 2026, when the United States and Israel began the war by jointly attacking Iran with a barrage of bombs and missiles. But Shahed drones have mainly struck stationary targets such as Amazon data centers and energy facilities, sometimes hitting slow-moving commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

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Trump wants $1B to protect White House ballroom from drones and other threats

20 May 2026 at 19:59

President Donald Trump’s latest pitch for using taxpayer dollars to secure his White House ballroom featured a militarized building—including a rooftop hardened against drone strikes and a “drone port” that could potentially house military drones.

The remarks came on May 19 as Trump gave reporters a personal tour of the ballroom project that has already involved the demolition of the White House mansion’s East Wing. The president spoke of installing a rooftop drone base “for unlimited numbers of drones” operated by the US military as a “drone port that would protect all of Washington,” according to Reuters. He also highlighted a ballroom roof made from “impenetrable steel” that would supposedly be “drone-proof” against potential drone strikes.

To pay for such measures, Trump has been urging Republican lawmakers in the US Congress to approve $1 billion in taxpayer funding to provide a wide variety of “security adjustments and upgrades” for his ballroom project. The taxpayer-backed security enhancements would be separate from the $400 million construction cost for the ballroom project that has been funded by private donors, including companies such as Amazon, Apple, Coinbase, Comcast, Google, HP Inc., Lockheed Martin, Meta, Micron Technology, Microsoft, Palantir, Ripple, and T-Mobile.

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