Chiayi:

At a drone testing field in southwestern Taiwan, university students watch anxiously as the unmanned aerial vehicles they designed take off, land and occasionally crash in a simulated battlefield scenario.

They are participating in a competition that helps Taiwan in its efforts to boost domestic drone production.

As Beijing maintains military pressure on the island, Taipei is ramping up investment in unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, in a bid to build a more nimble defense against a potential Chinese attack.

Both Ukraine and Russia have made extensive use of UAVs throughout their conflict for surveillance and striking targets behind the front.

UAVs flying in the National Defense Application UAV Challenge could be adopted by drone companies and purchased by the government.

“We can see applications of drones in many current conflicts happening around the world,” said competition organizer Jan Shau-Shiun, a professor in the department of space systems engineering at National Cheng Kung University.

“Taiwan is in a position where we can also face such a problem, so based on this theme, we aim to strengthen our drone capabilities.”

China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has refused to give up using force to bring it under its control.

Now in its second year, the competition was held over two days last month at the Asia UAV AI Innovation Application Research and Development Center in Chiayi County.

Twenty teams from Taiwan gathered to test their drones. The field will be whittled down to a shortlist this month for another challenge, before the winner is announced next year.

The multi-rotor, fixed-wing drones were required to fly autonomously at a height of at least 60 meters (about 200 feet), take images of a remote target and return to base within 10 minutes.

To make the scenario more realistic — and more difficult — this year’s organizers used a jammer to disrupt satellite signals to the UAVs, making it harder for them to stay in the air.

“From observing the war in Ukraine and other conflicts, we can see that there is often interference on the GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) before any combat,” Jan said.

“Practical Skills”

After spending countless hours designing and building their drones with the help of local drone or electronics companies, the teams watched nervously as their UAVs took flight.

Some drones failed to reach the required height or crashed due to jamming.

Cheng Yong-jen, 24, breathed a sigh of relief after the drone he helped design took off, soared into the distance and returned safely.

“It crashed, we fixed it, it crashed again and we fixed it again,” said Cheng, a graduate student at Formosa National University.

“When the drone finally came down, I was in tears.”

Lin Chun-Liang, head judge and professor of electrical engineering at National Chung Hsing University, said the competition helped students develop “practical skills” that are not taught in schools.

Taiwan is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to buy and develop drones, and also to promote local talent to work in the sector, in the process of improving its military capabilities.

President Lai Ching-te has pledged to make Taiwan “the Asian hub of unmanned aerial vehicle supply chains”.

However, keeping workers in the industry is a challenge in Taiwan, where the huge semiconductor sector can offer higher salaries to top graduates.

Cheng said he plans to join a drone company after completing his master’s thesis on defense drones, insisting that “this is the path we need to take.”

“We cannot stop moving forward just because we are behind others,” Cheng said.

(This story was not edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)