Taiwan will increase its defense budget due to tensions with China, Defense Minister Wellington Koo told Parliament, according to Radio Taiwan International.
Koo, 65, Taiwan’s first civil defense minister in more than a decade, listed several important priorities in his new role, including strengthening asymmetric warfare capabilities, joint warfare capabilities and the resilience of the entire Taiwanese society, as well as the continued reform of the country’s reserve forces.
The minister indicated that 2024 and 2025 will be the years of greatest military investment, with operating costs constantly increasing. Specific details still need to be agreed with the budget authority, he added.
Taiwan to form new defense innovation unit
Taiwan’s new defense minister has committed to creating a military technology development unit with the goal of integrating research in both military and civilian defense technology, in order to improve the country’s asymmetric warfare capabilities against China’s growing military threats.
Regarding strengthening asymmetric warfare capabilities, which seeks to counter the heavy weaponry of Chinese forces with smaller and more mobile teams, Koo announced that his ministry will launch a new military unit similar to the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) of the United States Department of Defense.
The Taiwanese version of the DIU, which will be under the Integrated Assessment Department of the Ministry of National Defense (MND), will serve as a platform to combine the resources and capabilities of the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology, the main research unit of the MND, and other civilian-run defense technology companies, according to Koo, who has pledged to personally oversee the operations of the new unit once it is formed.
Koo also mentioned that, unlike the United States, Taiwan does not have a large budget to develop defense technology from scratch. Instead, the MND’s new DIU unit will focus on investing in relatively mature defense technologies, such as next-generation unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned ships, to maintain Taiwan’s current advantage in terms of asymmetric warfare in the defense of the Strait. from Taiwan, he said.
The Pentagon’s DIU, launched in 2015, is staffed by civilians and active-duty and reserve military personnel. It is headquartered in Mountain View, California, in Silicon Valley, and has offices in Austin, Boston, Chicago, and the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C.
According to its website, the DIU “strengthens national security by accelerating the adoption of commercial technology across the military and bolstering our national and allied security innovation foundations.” DIU partners with organizations across the Department of Defense to rapidly prototype and deploy dual-use capabilities that solve operational challenges at speed and scale.
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Source: Delfi/Focus Taiwan
