12th September 2026 – (Taipei) Taiwan’s army has fielded American ALTIUS-600M loitering munitions without buying the matching chargers because the original units were made on the mainland, leaving troops reliant on United States technicians to help power the systems — a logistics gap that drew sharp fire from a Kuomintang lawmaker.
Taiwanese media reported on 10th September that the army’s purchase from Anduril Industries Inc. omitted chargers after the mainland manufacturing origin ruled them out. With munitions on hand but no charger package, each charging session has required US technical representatives to travel to Taiwan to assist.
Legislator Ma Wen-chun asked whether such rear-area support could be counted on in wartime. Through the Hunt Owl project the army has been building an unmanned fleet, buying Switchblade 300 and ALTIUS-600M systems from the United States. The first batch is already in service and further buys are planned, with the services casting the drones as decisive weapons.
Ma said the charger shortfall only emerged after delivery, when it became clear the US letter of offer and acceptance never listed the item. The OEM charger was mainland-made, so Washington never intended to sell it under Taiwan’s push to exclude a “red supply chain”. That exclusion, she argued, should have been checked before the contract, not after. By April this year substitutes were still hard to find, and US technicians were again needed for charging — drones home from the factory yet useless without foreign help to put power in the batteries.
She also attacked spare-battery numbers for 291 ALTIUS-600M rounds that reportedly approached eight times the airframe count. The munition is a one-shot expendable, she said, so battery demand should have been calculated before purchase; discovering possible over-ordering only after arrival and then asking the US side to cut quantities inverted the logic. Chargers that should have been bought were missing, while surplus batteries piled up — who set the requirement, and who signed it off?
Even before those questions were settled, the defence authorities announced at the end of August a further NT$26.9 billion order from Anduril for 1,554 ALTIUS-700M and 478 ALTIUS-600ISR systems, 2,032 aircraft in all, with deliveries stretching to 2033. Ma said drones are worth buying, but needs, performance, quantities and logistics must be fixed before the kit arrives, not patched afterwards, and that price, capability and support for this deal still need a clear army answer.
Beijing has already sanctioned Anduril under the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law for arms sales to Taiwan that it says breach the one-China principle, freezing the firm’s assets in China, barring domestic cooperation and denying visas to executives including founder Palmer Luckey, chief executive Brian Schimpf, chief operating officer Matthew Grimm and a senior global defence vice-president. The charger row now adds a domestic political sting: weapons bought to keep mainland components out still depend, for basic recharging, on American staff flying in.