Taiwan unveils first domestically built submarine

Kaohsiung – Taiwan unveiled its first domestically built submarine on Thursday, as the massively outgunned island works to bolster its defences against China.

China, which regards the self-governing Taiwan as its territory to be reunified, has in recent years

regularly carried out military drills around the island

as it seeks to assert its sovereignty claims and pressure Taipei.

Taiwan, which rejects China’s sovereignty claims, has increased defence spending – allotting a record US$19 billion (S$26 billion) for 2024 – to acquire military equipment, particularly from its key ally the United States, but its quest to obtain a submarine has faced obstacles.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen – strongly opposed by Beijing for her refusal to accept China’s authority over the island – launched a submarine programme in 2016 with the aim of delivering a fleet of eight vessels.

The first prototype, named Hai Kun, which means “mythical sea creature” in Chinese, was unveiled on Thursday at a ceremony in the southern port city of Kaohsiung.

“History will forever remember this day,” declared Ms Tsai, standing in front of the vessel draped in Taiwan’s flag colours.

“In the past, building submarines domestically was considered ‘Mission Impossible’. But today, a submarine designed and built by our own people is right in front of everyone – we did it,” she said.

Mr Cheng Wen-lon, chairman of submarine manufacturer CSBC Corp – which specialises in shipping containers and military vessels – said the seven-year building process had the team working around the clock, calling it “a magical weapon in asymmetric warfare”.

Hai Kun measures 80m in length and has a displacement weight of about 2,500 tonnes to 3,000 tonnes. It features combat systems and torpedoes sourced from US defence company Lockheed Martin.

It will now undergo sea trials, with Ms Tsai saying Hai Kun would be operational by 2025 – though some defence analysts say it could take longer.

Taiwan’s navy currently has two working submarines – Swordfish-class vessels bought from the Netherlands in the 1980s.

Washington initially approved an offer in 2001 to supply eight conventional submarines, but the sale never materialised.

Over the same period, China has built one of the world’s largest navies, with nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers.

‘Crucial element’

China has about 60 submarines, six of which are nuclear-powered and armed with ballistic missiles, according to the US Department of Defence – a clear numbers advantage compared with Taiwan’s fledgling fleet.

But Mr Jiang Hsin-biao at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defence and Security Research said deploying submarines at major choke points – like the Bashi Channel and the Okinawa waterway – would be enough to cause problems for China.

“It can disrupt the People’s Liberation Army’s attempt to encircle and attack Taiwan from the east and west,” he said, referring to China’s military.

“What surface ships fear most is attacks from underwater... A submarine can make the enemy’s formation hard to defend and serve as a deterrence.”

Mr Ben Lewis, a US-based independent expert on the Chinese military’s movements around Taiwan, said the submarine will pose a risk to China’s amphibious assault and troop transport capabilities.

“They have practised extensively the use of civilian vessels to augment their existing troop delivery platforms, and a submarine could wreak havoc on vessels not designed for naval warfare.”

But Mr Zivon Wang, a military analyst at Taipei-based think-tank Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies, said there is still a long way to go before Taiwan is “combat capable”.

“The launch... does not mean that Taiwan will become very powerful right away but it is a crucial element of Taiwan’s defence strategy and a part of our efforts to build deterrence capabilities.”

China’s Defence Ministry on Thursday slammed Taiwan’s strategy of protecting itself from an encirclement with its first domestically built submarines as “idiotic nonsense”.

Asked about using them to prevent the People’s Liberation Army from entering the Pacific to surround the island, ministry spokesman Wu Qian said: “No matter how many weapons the DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) authorities build or purchase, they cannot stop the general trend of national reunification.” AFP