Japan Drone Industry Calls for Deeper Cooperation with Taiwan on Regulatory Alignment and Supply Chain Integration

A senior figure in Japan's drone industry is pushing for regulatory alignment and deeper manufacturing cooperation between Japan and Taiwan, arguing that inconsistent certification frameworks and Tokyo's restrictions on defence collaboration are holding both industries back. Kakuya Iwata, executive director of the Japan UAS Industrial Development Association (JUIDA), laid out that position in an interview with Nikkei Asia on July 4.

Iwata said the two countries already have close manufacturing ties and complementary strengths. Japan has deep expertise in key components such as motors, while Taiwan has the capacity and infrastructure to scale production for export orders.

The real obstacles, he argued, are the differing ways the two countries certify and regulate drones, combined with Tokyo's restrictions on defence cooperation with Taipei — constraints that have prevented the military and dual-use segments of the relationship from maturing.

Complementary Strengths for a Non-China Supply Chain

The underlying logic is a pairing that looks strong on paper: Japan's component depth combined with Taiwan's manufacturing capacity, targeting export markets that are increasingly looking to source non-Chinese drones. Iwata described this as a partnership in which each side fills the other's gaps.

Japan brings a mature regulatory foundation and precision manufacturing capability. As early as December 2022, Japan completed the legalisation of Level 4 flight — BVLOS operations over populated areas — and Japanese operators have already deployed drones extensively in medical delivery and infrastructure inspection.

Taiwan brings mass production capability and urgency. Over the past several years, Taiwan has been actively building a domestic drone industry with an explicit goal of replacing Chinese hardware, and is competing for the same overseas buyers as Japan.

Regulatory Divergence Is the Real Barrier

The problem is not political will — it is paperwork. Both Iwata and a Taiwanese analyst pointed to certification barriers as the wall standing between the two industries, even as political enthusiasm continues to rise.

Teng Hung-yuan, an analyst at Taiwan's Research Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology, told Nikkei Asia that differences in drone certification, electrical safety, and communications standards make cross-border collaboration more difficult, and complicate government procurement of each other's systems.

He noted that the United States has already provided Taiwanese manufacturers with a pathway into the American market through the Green UAS programme, but no equivalent mechanism currently exists between Taiwan and Japan.

Green UAS is a cybersecurity and supply chain assurance programme led by the Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), aligned with US defence procurement standards and recognised as a pathway onto the Pentagon's Blue UAS approved list. The framework is moving quickly: in June, Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) became the first Green UAS assessment body outside the United States. A comparable structure linking Taipei and Tokyo does not yet exist.

Japan and Taiwan do not maintain formal diplomatic relations — a legacy of Tokyo's 1972 shift to recognising Beijing — and that is part of the reason defence drone cooperation has remained cautious. Nevertheless, bilateral ties have been warming, with multiple senior Taiwanese officials making informal visits to Japan over the past year.

China: The Force Pushing Tokyo and Taipei Together

As Taiwanese media have reported, the real driver behind all of this is a single country: China. DJI's commanding grip on global markets, combined with Beijing's tightening export controls on rare earths and critical components, is pushing both Tokyo and Taipei to build supply chains that exclude China entirely.

Washington has spent the past two years constructing non-Chinese alternatives through the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the Blue UAS list, and the Green UAS programme. Taiwan has channelled the same anxiety into industrial policy. Taiwan's "zero red" initiative — requiring drones to contain no Chinese-made components — operates through a national team consortium with a dedicated industrial base in Chiayi County, backed by more than NT$10 billion in multi-year government investment.

Taiwan is pushing hard on scale, targeting annual production of approximately 180,000 units by 2028 — a dramatic increase from its current industrial base — and has stated publicly that it cannot reach that figure without foreign partners and buyers.

Those needs are not hypothetical. Taiwan exported more than 100,000 drones in 2025, with buyers including Poland, the Czech Republic, and the United States — markets actively seeking non-Chinese hardware in the wake of the war in Ukraine. Japan, observing Chinese manufacturers being excluded from US markets, sees the same opportunity.

Japan has its own domestic push. Local manufacturer ACSL has reported rising demand as Chinese drones are turned away by American buyers, and Tokyo has incorporated the development of a domestic drone industry into its defence planning. What Japan lacks is Taiwan's manufacturing scale — which is precisely why Iwata is looking across the Taiwan Strait rather than looking inward alone.

Taiwan has already signalled its interest in becoming a supply partner. Late last year, Taiwan launched a "drone diplomacy" campaign, planning to sell military-grade drones and unmanned vessels to Asia-Pacific partners, with Japan among the target markets. Iwata's call is the industry-side response to that handshake — with the signal this time coming from Tokyo rather than Taipei.

JUAIDA is Japan's largest drone industry organisation, with more than 28,000 members and over 270 accredited training schools. That private-sector base is exactly the kind of infrastructure that could underpin a cross-border supply chain — provided regulations allow it.

Editorial Perspective

To put it plainly: this is not a story about two friendly neighbours choosing to work together. It is a story about a shared fear of China. Remove that fear, and the cooperation does not happen.

Whoever cracks the cross-border certification problem first stands to win the prize — and the prize is a European market reshaped by the war in Ukraine. The bottleneck is not technology, and it is not political will. It is certification paperwork. As is so often the case, the least exciting variable may be the one that determines who wins.

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