Taiwan's Thunder Tiger targets U.S. Army Drone Dominance drone orders.

Taiwanese drone maker Thunder Tiger is positioning its Overkill FPV family and China's free supply chain to compete in the Pentagon's new Drone Dominance Program, which aims to buy more than 200,000 small unmanned systems by 2027. If selected, the company would shift from regional supplier to a Blue UAS-certified player in the United States tactical drone market, with new production planned on US soil.

Taiwan-based manufacturer Thunder Tiger is moving to join the Pentagon's Drone Dominance Program, a high-volume effort to field over 200,000 small drones for US forces by 2027, including 30,000 systems to be delivered before July 2026 under funding from the so-called Big Beautiful Bill. Framing its bid around a China free component stack and cyber-hardened architectures, and building on the recent inclusion of its Overkill first-person view drone on the US Department of Defense Blue UAS Cleared List, the company is pitching itself as a new, scalable source of tactical drones for the US Army.
Follow Army Recognition on Google News at this link

The United States has granted Blue UAS certification to Thunder Tiger's Overkill series of suicide drones. (Picture source: Thunder Tiger)

This development is part of the broader expansion of Taiwan’s unmanned systems industry, at a time when Taipei is seeking to consolidate both its industrial base and its defense ties with Washington. The US approach creates a very structured framework. The Drone Dominance Program, financed at around 1.1 billion dollars through the Big Beautiful Bill, is designed as a series of four successive “gauntlets” in which the military evaluates industry-supplied drones in realistic scenarios before gradually reducing the number of approved suppliers. The first phase is meant to select 25 companies for operational trials, then retain only about a dozen to produce the first 30,000 systems, with the objective of bringing the unit cost down to roughly 2,300 dollars as volumes increase. For Thunder Tiger, entering this process means facing intense competition on price, software robustness, and component traceability, while gaining access to what would be the largest Western order of tactical drones to date.

The core of the bid rests on the Overkill family, a first-person view (FPV) drone designed on the basis of lessons learned from the conflict in Ukraine. Overkill has an endurance of around 30 minutes, a maximum speed of about 120 km/h, and can carry up to 3 kg of payload, which allows it to integrate explosive charges equivalent to an 81 mm mortar round or more complex optronic sensors. The airframe is optimised to operate in dense urban environments, clear obstacles and exploit unexpected axes of approach, including rooftops, basements and narrow corridors. The aircraft is entirely produced in Taiwan, with communications, battery and flight control modules coming from the local industrial base, while aerospace grade motors are manufactured in the United States and electro optical sensors combine Taiwanese and Western components.

On the industrial side, Thunder Tiger already reports a production capacity of more than 1,000 drones per month on a line dedicated to military UAVs in Taiwan and announces the opening of an assembly site in Ohio in the first quarter of 2026 to support future US orders. This establishment on US soil is intended to meet Buy American requirements, reassure authorities about supply chain security, and shorten delivery times to US Army units. The partnership formed with companies such as RapidFlight in the field of additive manufacturing is also meant to enable rapid adaptation of airframes and payloads to different mission profiles while maintaining controlled costs.

Thunder Tiger’s portfolio is not limited to aerial drones. The company states that it produces up to 500 unmanned surface vessels (USVs) per year, including the SeaShark 800, a fast craft equipped with a US-made engine, capable of exceeding 90 km/h at sea and operating in manned or remotely controlled mode. The platform integrates a British communication system with a range of about 60 km, opening the way to naval saturation scenarios, coastal mine clearance tasks or short-range convoy escort missions. The combination of fast USVs and swarms of armed FPV drones reflects the current move toward distributed architectures that link surface and air platforms within sensor effect networks.

At the tactical level, the Overkill FPV is configured to deliver immediate effects in support of frontline units. Its short-range data link, combined with control via FPV headset, enables very aggressive low-level flight paths and navigation close to obstacles, which reduces the detection window for opposing defenses. The 3 kg payload offers a balance between explosive mass and manoeuvrability that is suited to neutralising light vehicles, artillery pieces, electronic warfare stations or fortified positions. In urban environments, the ability to enter through narrow openings or to strike from above complements traditional indirect fire by providing infantry platoons with a near instant strike option that can be operated from cover. The US Army is specifically seeking this type of expendable, low-cost cost and easily replaceable system, capable of saturating local defenses by multiplying coordinated attacks.

The issues at stake extend beyond the tactical level. The presence of a Taiwanese manufacturer in Drone Dominance further anchors the island in US supply chains for unmanned systems, at a time when Washington is trying to reduce its dependence on Chinese-made drones and to secure the entire small UAV segment.

For Taipei, this opening strengthens the credibility of its defense industrial base and creates an alignment of interests with US forces, while sending a political message to Beijing about the depth of the partnership. In the longer term, the integration of Taiwanese suppliers into a program that is meant to deliver more than 200,000 drones by 2027 helps structure a transpacific combat drone ecosystem, with lasting effects on the balance of capabilities not only in the Taiwan Strait, but also across all theatres where US forces and their allies will require expendable platforms to sustain operations over time against opponents with comparable means.