This Is Taiwan's Cheapo Ship-Killing Drone
The Chien Feng IV is Taiwan's answer to the iconic Shahed
Taiwan is working with an American company to develop a cheap ship-sinking drone. Think of the Chien Feng IV as Taiwan’s answer to Russia’s Shahed attack drone—but with a maritime twist.
Deployed in large numbers, the drone could complicate any attempt by China to sail an invasion force across the Taiwan Strait. NCSIST expects the Chien Feng IV to fly for the first time in 2026.
The Chien Feng IV is a slightly larger, slightly higher-performing version of the MQM-178 Firejet target drone built by Kratos Defense in San Diego. Taiwan’s National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology announced this summer that it had partnered with Kratos to adapt the Firejet—normally used for realistic air-defense training—for offensive use.
The new explosive drone will perform “ship-hunting, ship-attacking, ground force-hunting [and] ground-force attacking,” Steve Fendley, president of Kratos’ Unmanned Systems Division, told The War Zone.
The 10-foot-long, 300-pound Firejet, a modern successor of the 1960s Firebee target drone, is powered by a pair of JetCat C81 turbojets propelling it to a top speed of Mach .7. The drone has a manual mode, where a human operator steers it in real time, as well as an automated mode for following a pre-planned flight path as far as 400 miles.
The idea is for a Firejet to mimic a cruise missile in order to give fighter pilots, ships’ crews and ground-based air defense operators realistic practice shooting down enemy missiles. If a Firejet survives its mission, it can pop a parachute and float back down to the ground for re-use.
