FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT IN BEIJING
The first Taiwan-designed and built submarine is ready for launch. The launching ceremony is scheduled for October, after seven years of secret work by a special team of a thousand military engineers, technicians and workers in the Kaohsiung shipyards.
The attack submarine is intended to attempt to rebalance the maritime situation around the island, where the Chinese People’s Liberation Army now crosses daily units of its fleet, recently reinforced by the aircraft carrier Shandong and protected by an impressive air shield.
The Taipei Defense plans to build a fleet of eight new “Indigenous Defense Submarines (IDS)”, these “Indigenous Submarines” will be armed with MK-48 torpedoes from the American Lockheed Martin, which can be used against both surface and other enemies Diver.
Currently, the Taiwanese Navy has practically no submarines: it nominally has four submarines in line, two of which were purchased in Holland in the 1980s and two more leftovers from World War II, taken over by the Americans and only for use Training of crews for deep sea operations can be used.
In Taipei, the government has great confidence in the new indigenous submarine. No one is thinking of countering China’s supremacy in the submarine field (Beijing has at least 70 submarines, a dozen of which are nuclear-powered, as opposed to the diesel-engined submarines designed by Taiwan). “But it will allow us to prevent the Chinese aircraft carrier from approaching the island to cut off supply lines, and with units like this we will also be able to avoid encirclement and naval blockade,” the former explained Naval officer to Courier Hsinbiao Jiang, who is now part of the state think tank Institute for National Defense and Security Research.
The Pentagon is also convinced that a Chinese naval blockade attempt would fail. But not thanks to Taipei’s submarines (which won’t be online for a few years anyway). The problem is purely political and economic, Ely Ratner, assistant secretary of defense for the Indo-Pacific, told Congress in Washington. “Talking about a naval blockade is easier than implementing it: it would pose a major risk of escalation for Beijing, which would have to decide what to do with the civilian ships that sail to the island despite the encirclement. We don’t think they would have the courage to actually attack.
A single cannon shot in the Pacific would cause the world stock markets to collapse, observe international economic analysts.