Singapore Airshow 2026: Early adopters and big spenders point to UAV market opportunities
The MQ-28 Ghost Bat is an uncrewed CCA developed by Boeing Defence Australia. (Photo: Boeing)
While an estimated $37.99bn is still to be awarded across the Asia-Pacific uncrewed aerial vehicle market, the balance of potential future spending is unevenly split between various countries, with significant opportunities to be found in the collaborative combat aircraft space.
The Asia-Pacific (APAC) uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) market is worth an estimated US$59.9bn, with $37.99bn in as-yet-unawarded procurements, a large portion of which are driven by collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) requirements.
Despite the UAV market’s headline size, though, there are stark divides between countries in terms of speed of adoption and programme maturity. While China, Japan and India are expected to dominate future spending, Taiwan is already moving quickly to acquire various UAV capabilities.
Taking a broader look at the APAC defence aerospace market as a whole, its total value is around $388 billion, according to Shephard Defence Insight research, with as-yet-unawarded or selected
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