Taiwan's first domestically made submarine, the Haikun, has completed its initial sea trial in Kaohsiung. It's part of the country's ambitious indigenous submarine program, which has enlisted help from the U.S. and U.K amid increasing aggression from China.
00:00Taiwan's first domestically-made submarine, the Haikun, has completed its initial sea trial.
00:06The US$1.67 billion vessel is part of the country's bid to modernize its military amid increasing aggression from China.
00:15Several countries, including the US and the UK, helped with its development.
00:19Taiwan aims to have two locally-made submarines on active duty by 2027.
00:24For more on the Haikun's latest progress, our defense reporter Jaime Ocon spoke to David Sachs, a security analyst with the Council on Foreign Relations.
00:37Part of the funding for Taiwan's submarine program is frozen in the LY until it passed sea acceptance tests, and now we're seeing that underway.
00:44What do you make of that progress for Taiwan's military?
00:47Yeah, it's good progress.
00:50As you mentioned in your question, the submarines have been highly contested in the legislature, and that was frozen by the opposition until they hit certain milestones.
01:03So I think that hopefully that is now going to be unfrozen if the submarine continues to make progress.
01:09Again, you can argue, is that money best spent on submarines, or is it best spent on other capabilities, you know, dollar for dollar?
01:19But my argument has always been that that has been resolved.
01:24Taiwan's government has been committed to the submarine program.
01:28And so the question is, knowing that, is it better to have one submarine or ten submarines?
01:35And given the kind of sunk cost to this program for Taiwan, if all it did was end up with one submarine, that would be a huge waste, right?
01:45All the R&D, all the man hours that it's taken to develop this platform, to manufacture it in Taiwan, and now to test it.
01:55I mean, you know, your unit costs are going to go down the more you make, because in my view, it is an asymmetric capability.
02:02We know that China struggles, at least to this point, with anti-submarine warfare.
02:08It adds questions to planners, I think, in the PLA about whether they can find these submarines and destroy them during a conflict.
02:16Let's say Taiwan, it does complete the program and get eight submarines in its fleet.
02:21How would they be used in a peacetime and in a wartime scenario?
02:24Again, this is something that's incredibly difficult to do, is to find a submarine and obviously to take it out.
02:32It's also something that the United States has a comparative advantage over the PLA and is seen as an enduring U.S. advantage during a potential conflict over Taiwan.
02:43So I think that it adds uncertainty to the Chinese planners.
02:50So, you know, of course, the question during an invasion, I think, is straightforward, is that they would try to destroy the, you know, they would try to destroy the invading forces crossing the strait.
03:03With these new capabilities, do you think Taiwan has a chance to do some sort of intelligence sharing with the United States and partners, given that it's able to operate in the same area as these countries?
03:13And I think it's going to be a big question if the U.S. Navy is obviously going to bring to bear its own submarines in a potential conflict over Taiwan.
03:28Then there's going to have to be some level of understanding about the water management between the U.S. Navy and Taiwan's Navy and which side is going to do what.
03:41So that conversation will have to happen, you know, on whether there's going to be intelligence sharing or opportunities for that.
03:49You know, I'm not too sure, but I think that at the bare minimum, there's going to have to be probably conversations between the U.S. and Taiwan about what role they play and how to, you know, how to de-conflict and manage allied forces during a potential contingency.
04:07That was David Sachs from the Council on Foreign Relations.
