Who May Bring a Drone Down? Taiwan's Law Authorises the Outcome and No Means of Achieving It

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The counter-drone post ended on a line: "the legal basis is actually sufficient; what is fractured is execution."

This post goes and tests that line. The method is dull: find every Taiwanese provision that might authorise counter-drone action and read all of them.

The test says the line needs changing. It is not a question of whether authority exists — the law authorises an outcome, not a means. Six settings are expressly authorised to "stop or remove" an intruding drone. Exactly one is authorised to use a specific thing to do it.

Counting first: 'drone' appears in 19 instruments, 'counter-drone' in 1

Before guessing, count. The Laws & Regulations Database of the Republic of China (Taiwan), integrated search, scope restricted to central regulations → article text:

Of the 19, only four have anything to do with handling an intruding drone: the Civil Aviation Act, the Commercial Port Act, the Military Installation Security Act, and the single-hit procurement act. The remaining fifteen are about registration, airworthiness checks, accident investigation, pesticide spraying, afforestation, marine biological surveys, coast guard office rules, amateur radio and aircraft radio stations.

The one instrument containing the phrase "counter-drone" is the Special Act on Procurement for the Plan to Defend National Security and Strengthen Asymmetric Capabilities (11 May 2026), Article 5, which is a list of items to buy:

6. The following items to be sold with the consent of the United States government within one year of this Act taking effect: (1) combined soft-kill/hard-kill counter-drone systems.

The phrase "counter-drone" occurs once in the whole body of Taiwanese central law, on a shopping list, conditioned on a foreign government's approval. It governs how to buy, not who may use it or when.

Worth noting alongside: a full-text search of the Telecommunications Management Act for "drone" returns nothing. That is the statute governing every radio emission in Taiwan, including the one a jammer makes.

Six settings, six verbs — and airports got the weakest one

Article 99-13 of the Civil Aviation Act, paragraphs 5 to 7, allocates enforcement responsibility. The counter-drone post tabulated this, but I only looked at who, not at the verb. The verb is the point:

Look at the second row. Airports and airfields — where a drone incursion does the most damage — got "enforce against", not "stop or remove."

Now the fifth row. Article 36-1 of the Commercial Port Act was added on 28 June 2023:

Within designated areas of a commercial port, drone flight activity is prohibited without prior permission; where this is violated, the port corporation, the Maritime and Port Bureau or the designated agency may take appropriate measures to stop or remove it.

Two acts under the same ministry: ports got "stop or remove", airports still only "enforce against". And the port provision in 2023 copied the Civil Aviation Act's "take appropriate measures to stop or remove" verbatim — it borrowed the sentence pattern without going back to fix the airport row.

What is the difference? Enforcement means recording the violation and imposing a penalty. Article 118-1 of the Civil Aviation Act fines an operator NT$300,000 to NT$1.5 million for flying in prohibited airspace or above 400 ft, revokes the licence and permits confiscation of the aircraft. But that is an after-the-fact administrative penalty against "the owner or the operator", which presupposes you can find the person. For the few minutes the drone is still in the air, "enforce against" does nothing.

'Appropriate measures' is undefined, so every means collides with another statute

The phrase appearing three times above is "take appropriate measures to stop or remove". What counts as appropriate? None of the three statutes says, and no subordinate regulation defines it.

When the statute does not define the means, you have to ask whether each concrete means is lawful in itself. Physically there are only a few ways to bring a drone down: shoot it, jam it, net it, or ram it with another aircraft. Take them one at a time against Taiwanese law.

Shooting: the police instrument list has 31 entries, including anti-tank guns, and no jammer

Article 1(2) of the Police Power Instrument Act:

The instruments referred to in the preceding paragraph include batons, sabres, firearms and other instruments; their types shall be prescribed by the Ministry of the Interior.

This is a statutorily delegated, enumerated list. The current version was promulgated by the Ministry of the Interior on 8 July 2024 (Tai-Nei-Jing No. 11308725692) as "Types of Police Instruments Issued to Police Agencies" — that amendment dropped the word "specifications" from the old title. The whole list has 31 entries:

The list includes mortars, recoilless rifles and anti-tank guns. It contains no drone jammer, no counter-UAS device, no aerial capture net. The only net is a riot net, for ground crowd control.

The list matters because of how Article 4 is built. Article 4(1) lists seven situations permitting the use of a sabre or firearm; the fourth is:

4. Where land, buildings, structures, vehicles, vessels, aircraft or the life, body, liberty or property of another person that the police officer is protecting is subject to harm or threat.

Note that "aircraft" is on the list of protected objects. So when a drone threatens an aircraft or a building, a police officer shooting at it does have a legal basis — that cell is not only authorised, it is authorised clearly.

Then Article 4(2):

In the preceding situations, other instruments prescribed under Article 1(2) may also be used where necessary.

"Prescribed" means "on that list". A jammer is not on the list, so it is not a police instrument and Article 4(2) is closed to it.

The only remaining door is Article 4(3):

Where a situation under subparagraph 4 or 5 of paragraph 1 arises and the police officer cannot effectively use a police instrument, they may use any other object sufficient to achieve the purpose, and that object shall be treated as a police instrument while in use.

So under current law, a police officer firing a jammer at a drone falls under the same clause as grabbing a chair. That is not a rhetorical flourish: Article 4(3) was written for the improvised case — no suitable instrument to hand — not for procured, issued, purpose-built equipment. Counter-drone equipment is precisely the latter.

Follow that thread back and it stings a little. The counter-drone post described the garrison on Erdan Island, Kinmen, throwing stones at a Chinese drone on 16 August 2022, which the Control Yuan's investigation report classified as an individual act. A stone is also "any other object sufficient to achieve the purpose". In the statute's taxonomy, the stone and the procured jammer travel under the same subparagraph.

Jamming: Article 67 of the Telecommunications Management Act has no public-duty exception

The soft-kill route runs into Article 67(1) of the Telecommunications Management Act:

The use of radio-frequency equipment shall not interfere with lawful communications or affect flight safety.

One sentence, no proviso, no "except where a government agency is performing statutory duties." Paragraph 2 empowers the competent authority to restrict or prohibit use; Article 80(1)(10) fines continued use in defiance of such an order NT$100,000 to NT$1 million, and Article 80(2) permits confiscation of the equipment.

Isn't there a military or police carve-out? No. The whole Act mentions national defence twice, and both are coordination mechanisms rather than exemptions:

• Article 56(2): allocation and adjustment of military radio frequencies is handled by the competent authority in consultation with the Ministry of National Defense.
• Article 63(1): where military frequency use interferes with other use, the competent authority handles it in consultation with the MND.

The MND gets a seat at the coordination table, not a right to emit interference.

"Interference" is not vague either. Article 36 of the Regulations for Administration of Radio Frequency Use:

Any emission sufficient to impair lawful radio communications constitutes interference.

Article 30 of the same regulations separately provides that emissions shall not cause harmful interference to radio navigation aids and other safety-of-life communications.

Is the drone being jammed engaged in "lawful communications"? Consumer drone control and video links run in the licence-exempt low-power 2.4 / 5.8 GHz bands, and use conforming to the LP0002 technical specification is lawful use — this series took LP0002 §4.10 and §5.7 apart. A jammer is broadband suppression anyway: it does not only hit that drone, it hits the Wi-Fi and every other device in the band within range.

The NCC opened the import door, not the trigger

Someone will answer this section by pointing at the NCC's approval. Two different things need separating here.

On 27 June 2024 the NCC's 1125th commission meeting approved for public notice draft amendments to the list of controlled RF equipment and its administrative rules. The press release is blunt:

The NCC explained that, given the need to protect critical infrastructure, the managing agencies require jammers in order to interdict unlawful drone flight.

The amended Regulations Governing the Manufacture, Import and Reporting of Controlled Telecommunications RF Equipment (all 32 articles reissued 3 February 2025) classify drone-restricting equipment as Class 1 controlled RF equipment in Article 3; Article 8(3)(9) permits an import application whose stated purpose is "maintaining national security, public order, the public interest, or protecting national critical infrastructure"; and Article 8(5) requires such an application to attach documentation proving the applicant is such an agency or a critical-infrastructure provider.

This is a complete, usable pathway. But it is a pathway for importing and holding. Article 65(2) governs manufacture and import subject to approval; Article 66 governs sale subject to type approval. None of them touches use. Use is Article 67(1), and Article 67(1) was not amended alongside.

So the position today is: a critical-infrastructure operator may lawfully buy and lawfully hold a jammer, and no provision anywhere says it may pull the trigger. Any claim of the form "our equipment is NCC-approved" needs the follow-up question: approved for which act?

Added 2026-08-09: this is not hypothetical, it is already happening. The Legislative Yuan Budget Center's Civil Aviation Operating Fund FY2024 Budget Evaluation Report records: "All domestic airports: handheld jammers have been procured, investigated through the regional joint-defence mechanism, and used to counter the drone as the situation requires." Every airport in the country already holds them and they are explicitly listed as a response measure — and that report is dated October 2023, more than a year before the NCC opened the public-duty import path on 3 February 2025. Details in the airport post.

The one provision that names a drone: Military Installation Security Act, Article 10

Exactly one provision in Taiwanese law makes a drone itself a trigger for using force. Article 10(1) of the Military Installation Security Act:

Where a commander, duty officer, non-commissioned officer or sentry performing military installation security duties encounters any of the following, they may use instruments; where necessary, they may use weapons: (…) 3. A drone or other unmanned flying object overflies the military installation and there is a risk of harm to national defence or military facilities or to classified information.

This is the only time a Taiwanese legislature has written the drone into a use-of-force element itself, rather than folding it into a general "property subject to harm" catch-all. The Act was promulgated in full — 25 articles — on 3 January 2024.

Then two limits, both worth reading word for word.

First, subparagraph 3 is not the sentry's call. Article 10(2):

Where a sentry uses a weapon under subparagraphs 1 to 5 or subparagraph 9 of the preceding paragraph, they shall act on the order of the commander, the duty officer or the non-commissioned officer.

Subparagraph 3 falls inside "1 to 5". So a sentry who sees a drone must wait for an order to use a weapon; using an instrument is not so constrained, because paragraph 2 limits weapons only. What the counter-drone post described as "an authorisation level incompatible with the threat's timescale" has here been promoted from SOP into statute.

Second, the drone subparagraph is excluded from the improvisation clause. Article 10(3):

Where a situation under subparagraph 4, 6 or 7 of paragraph 1 arises … and a weapon or instrument cannot effectively be used, any other object sufficient to achieve the purpose may be used, and shall be treated as a weapon or instrument while in use.

Subparagraph 3 is not in that list. The legislature wrote a dedicated subparagraph for drones and then left it out of the "grab whatever is to hand" provision. To throw a stone at a drone lawfully, you still have to route back through subparagraph 4 (a guarded or controlled site subject to harm).

And the third fact is the one to remember: the Act was promulgated on 3 January 2024 and, by Executive Yuan order, took effect only on 1 August 2025 — nearly nineteen months later. From the Erdan Island incident of 16 August 2022 to that commencement date is close to three years.

The airport is the cell that is squeezed from three sides

Apply all of the above to an airport and you get the most awkward cell in Taiwan:

1. The weakest verb. Article 99-13(6) gives an airport "enforce against"; it does not have the "stop or remove" that ports have.
2. Soft kill is named as the prohibited thing. Article 67(1) of the Telecommunications Management Act prohibits interference with lawful communications "or affecting flight safety" — an airport is exactly what those words denote. Broadband suppression at the runway threshold is the precise act that provision forbids.
3. Hard kill at an airport means firing next to a runway. The authority under Article 4(1)(4) exists ("aircraft" is on the protected list), but the debris and stray rounds are themselves aviation-safety events.
4. The after-the-fact remedy requires catching someone. Article 118-1's NT$300,000–1.5 million fine and confiscation apply to "the owner or the operator".

The setting where incursions matter most has the weakest authority and the most explicit prohibition on the obvious means.

Eight years, six legislative moves, and none of them changed the means

Laid out in order:

Eight years, six legislative moves. What changed was who is responsible (Civil Aviation Act, Commercial Port Act), how to import (NCC), and how to buy (procurement act). Exactly one move changed what may be used — and it covers military installations only.

Three conclusions

1. Read counter-drone law in two layers: what outcome is authorised, and what means is authorised. Taiwan has written the outcome for six settings and the means for one. Before buying a counter-drone system, work out which cell you are in — if you are an airport, a power station or a science park, the equipment you buy currently rests on the improvisation clause of Article 4(3), or on calling the police.
2. Lawful equipment is not lawful use. What the NCC opened in February 2025 is the import door; the use prohibition in Article 67(1) is untouched. On a slide those two collapse very easily into the single word "compliant", and they are not the same thing.
3. My own earlier conclusion needs correcting. The counter-drone post said "the legal basis is actually sufficient; what is fractured is execution." Having read the provisions, the accurate statement is: the law names who is responsible without naming what they may do; the fracture is not only in execution, it is in the text. The Control Yuan's record of three SOP revisions in two months now reads less like military conservatism and more like an SOP filling a gap the statute left open.

What this post does not answer, and whether those gaps could refute it

This series' rule is that before writing "I did not do X", you ask whether X could refute what you are writing. Item by item:

• I read no court judgments. Checked (2026-08-10). The Judicial Yuan's judgment database is queryable via browser automation — I had wrongly concluded it was not. Results: 「遙控無人機」 (drone) returns 32 judgments across the whole database; 「遙控無人機 干擾器」 (drone + jammer) returns none at all. So no judgment to date contains both a drone and a jammer — the legal position this post derives has never been tested in a case. Three limits to state: a keyword search is not an issue analysis (I did not read what those 32 are about), the database's coverage is not every judgment, and the counts are as of 2026-08-10. The original reasoning is kept below — Could this refute the post? Partly: if a court has held that purpose-built counter-drone equipment falls under Article 4(3)'s "other object sufficient to achieve the purpose" and is therefore justified, the claim here softens to "only the improvisation clause is available" — and I have already written that door into the post, so such a judgment reinforces rather than overturns it. A judgment holding the opposite — that the subparagraph does not reach pre-procured equipment — would make the conclusion stronger.
• I did not read the legislative rationale for Article 99-13 or Article 36-1. I did not pull the Legislative Yuan gazette, so whether "airports get only enforcement" was deliberate or an oversight, I do not know. Could this refute the post? No — the verb asymmetry is a fact of the text; the rationale would only explain its cause.
• I did not read agencies' internal SOPs beyond the MND one reproduced in the Control Yuan report. Internal rules cannot create authority the statute withholds, but they do show how practice routes around it.
• I did not use procurement records to establish which agencies actually hold jammers. I tried the public procurement API; its keyword matching is fuzzy (a search for "jammer gun" returns "drone jammer" and also "remote drone procurement case"), so any count would be a guess. So there is no count here.

What in this post expires (added 2026-08-10)

The clause analysis here is static, but two items carry deadlines and need re-checking before citation:

• The "one year" in Article 5(1)(6) of the procurement special act: those six items (including "combined soft-kill/hard-kill counter-drone systems") are conditioned on being "sold with the consent of the United States government within one year of this Act taking effect". The Act was promulgated on 2026-05-11, so that window closes around May 2027 — after which whether the subparagraph still has any object changes what "it appears once, on a shopping list" means. Check: the Act's amendment history.
• Whether Article 67(1) of the Telecommunications Management Act is amended: this entire post rests on that use prohibition being untouched. Add a public-duty exception to it and the central conclusion has to be rewritten. Check: the Act's amendment history (at the time of writing, the last amendment was 2026-01-05 and it touched Article 72).

Also, do not confuse the two special acts: this post cites the Special Act on Procurement for the Plan to Defend National Security and Strengthen Asymmetric Capabilities (promulgated and in force). A separate NT$210bn Special Act on Procurement of Indigenous Defence Unmanned Vehicles is still stuck in negotiation — see the defence budget post.

How to reproduce the searches

Negative findings only count if they can be re-run, so here are the queries. Run on 2026-08-09 against the Laws & Regulations Database integrated search, scope "central regulations → article text":

https://law.moj.gov.tw/Law/LawSearchResult.aspx?cur=Ld&ty=ONEBAR&kw=無人機
  → 19 instruments

https://law.moj.gov.tw/Law/LawSearchResult.aspx?cur=Ld&ty=ONEBAR&kw=反制無人機
  → 1 instrument (the asymmetric-capabilities procurement special act)

Single-statute article search:
https://law.moj.gov.tw/LawClass/LawSearchContent.aspx?pcode=K0060111&kw=無人機
  → Telecommunications Management Act: no results

The 31-entry instrument list is taken from the Ministry of the Interior's own announcement text in the Executive Yuan Gazette (2024-07-08, Tai-Nei-Jing No. 11308725692), not from a secondary summary; the link is in the references.

References

Primary: statutory text

• Civil Aviation Act, Article 99-13 — Laws & Regulations Database (paragraphs 5–7, the four settings and the "stop or remove" / "enforce against" verb split)
• Civil Aviation Act, Article 118-1 (NT$300,000–1.5m fine, licence revocation, confiscation)
• Commercial Port Act, Article 36-1 (added 2023-06-28, in force 2026-02-01; "appropriate measures to stop or remove")
• Military Installation Security Act, Article 10 (para 1 subpara 3 on drones; para 2 sentry must act on order; para 3 improvisation clause excludes subpara 3)
• Military Installation Security Act, legislative history (25 articles promulgated 2024-01-03; Executive Yuan order sets commencement at 2025-08-01)
• Police Power Instrument Act, Article 4 (the seven situations; subpara 4's protected list includes aircraft; para 2 "instruments prescribed under Article 1(2)"; para 3 treated-as clause)
• Police Power Instrument Act, full text (Article 1(2): types prescribed by the Ministry of the Interior)
• Telecommunications Management Act, Article 67 (use shall not interfere with lawful communications or affect flight safety)
• Telecommunications Management Act, Article 80 (para 1 subpara 10 fine; para 2 confiscation)
• Telecommunications Management Act, Article 56 and Article 63 (military frequency "in consultation with the MND" — coordination, not exemption)
• Regulations for Administration of Radio Frequency Use, Article 36 (any emission sufficient to impair lawful radio communications is interference) and Article 30 (no harmful interference to radio navigation aids)
• Regulations Governing Manufacture, Import and Reporting of Controlled Telecom RF Equipment, Article 3 (Class 1 includes drone-restricting equipment) and Article 8 (purpose subpara 9 and required documentation)
• Special Act on Procurement for Defending National Security and Strengthening Asymmetric Capabilities, Article 5 ("combined soft-kill/hard-kill counter-drone systems")

Primary: agency announcements and press releases

• Ministry of the Interior announcement amending "Types and Specifications of Police Instruments Issued to Police Agencies", retitled "Types of Police Instruments" (2024-07-08, Tai-Nei-Jing No. 11308725692) — Executive Yuan Gazette (full 31-entry table)
• NCC press release: commission approves draft amendments to the controlled RF equipment list (2024-06-27) ("the managing agencies require jammers in order to interdict unlawful drone flight")
• Civil Aeronautics Administration — drone section (drone chapter: third reading 2018-04-03, promulgated 2018-04-25, in force 2020-03-31)
• Control Yuan — investigation report 112國調0010 (the four revisions to the MND's drone-response SOP and the Erdan Island findings)

On this site

• Why Countering Drones Is Hard: Jamming Is Failing, and Taiwan's Problem Is Not Only Technical
• Police May Lawfully Fly a Drone, but That Is Not Authority to Film
• The Drone Chapter Has No Privacy Provision: Anyone Overflown Is Thrown Back on the Criminal Code
• Which Rule Does the Video Link Fall Under? 5.8 GHz Analogue FPV Fits Neither
• Taiwan's Drone Industry Map