Taiwan's First Homemade Submarine Arrives With Eye on China Tensions

Taiwan unveiled the first of eight planned domestically produced submarines on Thursday to much fanfare, with the island's leadership lauding it as a historic leap forward in "defense autonomy" as China steps up its military activity in its surrounding seas and airspace.

President Tsai Ing-wen attended the launching ceremony at the Kaohsiung city shipyard of defense contractor and shipbuilder CSBC Corporation in southern Taiwan, christening the lead vessel of the Taiwanese navy's new Hai Kun, or "Narwhal," class of boats.

Taiwan's indigenous defense submarine program was previously thought impossible, said Tsai, whose second term in office ends next May. She called it a turning point for the island's national defense efforts and tasked the Hai Kun with the "sacred mission to defend maritime borders."

Sandra Oudkirk, director of the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto U.S. embassy on the island, was among the dignitaries invited to the ceremony. It was also attended by Chiu Kuo-cheng, Taiwan's defense minister.

More than a dozen nations including the United States are understood to have contributed so-called "red zone" or sensitive technologies toward the submarine program. Taipei has not disclosed the precise number of foreign governments that sanctioned components sales to Taiwan.

The addition of the Hai Kun, which is expected to enter service next year after sea trials, brings Taiwan's standing submarine fleet to five. Of the four aging boats, two were purchased from the Netherlands in the 1980s and two were former U.S. training submarines built during World War II.

Adm. Huang Shu-kuang, Taiwan's former chief of general staff who heads the submarine program, said earlier this month that the slated eight Hai Kun-class boats would bolster the country's defenses to the point that "I don't think we will lose a war."

Taiwan has been increasing its domestic defense production capacity in recent years, producing weapons and weapons platforms in pursuit of an asymmetric strategy to deter China, which views Taiwan as part of its territory that must eventually be unified with the mainland, through force if necessary.

China's armed forces, including its navy, are currently undergoing a decades-long military reform overseen by Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Few expect Taiwan to compete with the People's Liberation Army's capacities, but strategists believe the island is defensible despite Taipei's relatively limited resources.

Taiwan has also been stocking up on American weapons, with Washington approving the sale of billions of dollars worth of arms in recent years, including to upgrade Taiwan's fleet of F-16 fighter jets.

The Global Times, the nationalistic newspaper published by the Communist Party in Beijing, this week mocked the new submarine by saying Taiwanese authorities were "daydreaming." China's "multidimensional anti-submarine network" of aircraft and warships could easily detect and destroy Taiwan's boats in the event of a conflict, the state-owned tabloid said.

The paper also said that technologies developed by other countries may be incompatible with the made-in-Taiwan submarines, especially given Taiwan's lack of experience building such boats. China's PLA Navy has around 60 submarines.

Taiwan's submarines could be put to good use targeting Chinese ships or "massed follow-on forces onshore" during a conflict, Raymond Kuo, a senior researcher at the RAND Corp. think tank, told Newsweek. The relatively shallow, choppy waters of the Taiwan Strait were well-suited for masking submarines but also harder to operate in, he said.

Policy experts in the U.S. have urged Taipei to adopt an asymmetric defense strategy based on "lots of small, deadly things—anti-ship missiles, anti-air missiles, etc.—that would make Taiwan a porcupine." Such an approach would become more useful, and submarines less so, as China improves its anti-submarine warfare capabilities and deploys more and a broader range of transport platforms, Kuo said.

China's Foreign Ministry didn't return Newsweek's request for comment before publication.

Update 9/28/23, 12:15 p.m. ET: This article was updated with additional comments.