US military experts are warning Taiwan against launching its own indigenous submarine-building industry.
It is a “bad idea” that the nation probably cannot afford, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) senior fellow Evan Montgomery said.
He was supported by Dean Cheng (成斌), a senior research fellow in Chinese political and security affairs at the Heritage Foundation.
Cheng said that while he would encourage Taiwan to buy diesel-electric submarines if it could find someone who would sell them, he was “much more skeptical” about indigenous production.
Montgomery and Cheng were addressing a recent seminar titled “Warfare beneath the waves: The undersea domain in Asia” held by the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.
Taiwan could get far more “bang for its buck” in undersea warfare by investing in midget submarines and unmanned undersea vehicles, Montgomery said.
“Undersea warfare is extremely important for Taiwan. I just question the way they are approaching the issue,” he said.
The money spent on large diesel-electric submarines could be used elsewhere “to better effect,” he said.
Buying or developing large numbers of midget submarines or unmanned undersea vehicles could be just as effective and it would save Taiwan from putting all of its eggs in just a few “potentially vulnerable” baskets, Montgomery said.
Submarines have become such a focus for both military and civilian leaders in Taiwan, that “tunnel vision” had developed, crowding out thinking about other ways to shift the military balance in the Taiwan Strait back in the nation’s favor, he added.
“How in the world do you think are you going to sustain a submarine industry?” Cheng said. “And what would Taipei do with its submarine industry once its submarines had been completed? Do they simply shut down that piece of the defense industry after sinking billions and billions of dollars into it?”
He said that Taipei should explore the possibility of buying submarines from Japan.
Montgomery said that in theory, submarines could play a major role in countering an invasion or a maritime blockade by China. However, building between four and eight diesel-electric submarines with a displacement of about 1,500 tonnes each may not be worth it.
He said that building four submarines would cost about US$5 billion and Taiwan’s entire annual defense budget is only US$10.5 billion.
“A submarine program of the magnitude that Taiwan is considering would put a significant degree of stress on its defense spending,” Montgomery said, adding that the effectiveness of a submarine fleet might not be that great for Taiwan.
“Submarines are extremely capable and they are extremely survivable platforms when they are at sea and when they are submerged,” he said.
Even if Taiwan was able to build eight new submarines, only five or six of them would be available at any given time, while the others would remain in port, he added.
“It is precisely because submarines can be so effective that any boats in port would likely be the first targets for China at the outset of a conflict,” Montgomery said. “I suspect that China might be willing to escalate without warning if it meant catching Taiwan unawares, and preventing it from flushing its submarines and putting them to sea.”
“Any boats at sea would represent a potent capability, but there are limits to the amount of damage they could do,” he added. “These are boats with relatively small payloads, they carry only a small number of torpedoes and they would not be able to reload, because the port they operate from would be damaged or destroyed.”
Montgomery said that if Taiwan goes ahead with a submarine program, China would invest considerably more resources and effort on anti-submarine warfare. Since the first indigenously built Taiwanese submarine would not be ready until 2025 at the earliest, China would have plenty of time to prepare.
He said that because submarines in port were extremely vulnerable, Taiwan would probably want to build a new naval base inside a mountain on its eastern coast to protect them.
Such a facility would cost more billions, he added.
“The resources that Taiwan would need to devote to an effective submarine force would impose significant opportunity costs,” Montgomery said.
“A dollar spent on submarines is a dollar not spent on something else and that is a major consideration for a nation with a defense budget as small as Taiwan,” he added.
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