Taipei:Taiwan's drone industry must develop supply chains capable of maintaining production during extended conflicts rather than relying solely on stockpiles, AerosoarX Chairman Max Lo emphasized on Wednesday, drawing insights from the ongoing war in Ukraine.
According to Focus Taiwan, Lo spoke at his company's inaugural public event since its establishment in April, cautioning that a war of attrition could rapidly deplete even substantial inventories and that sustained operations would require production capacity across the entire supply chain.
Lo proposed establishing manufacturing operations in various countries with shared assembly specifications and interchangeable components. This strategy would allow other locations to take over and expand production if a conflict or blockade disrupted one site. He emphasized that "defense self-reliance does not mean doing everything ourselves" and advocated for cooperation based on common standards, joint procurement, distributed production, mutual maintenance, and shared reserve inventories.
Reflecting on his earlier experience at Geosat Aerospace & Technology, Lo noted that the previous approach of doing nearly 80 percent of development in-house is now too slow for rapidly changing requirements. AerosoarX aims to position Taiwan as a hub for system integration, modular design, and component kits shipped overseas for assembly, identifying Vietnam and Malaysia as potential supply-chain and assembly hubs.
Company co-founder and CEO Jason Wu highlighted the necessity of reaching beyond Taiwan's domestic market to make the supply chain commercially sustainable. Lo also acknowledged the economic costs of reducing dependence on Chinese suppliers and advocated a gradual reduction focused on critical supply-chain links, suggesting that smaller operations serving international customers could offer a flexible and commercially viable way to maintain production.
