The nation’s first domestically built submarine prototype, the Hai Kun (海鯤號), yesterday was transferred to a dry dock for final harbor acceptance tests.
The prototype has been undergoing harbor acceptance tests at the factory of shipbuilder CSBC Corp, Taiwan (台灣國際造船) in Kaohsiung since October last year after an unveiling ceremony in late September.
On Monday evening, the prototype was towed from the CSBC factory to nearby Jong Shyn floating dock No. 8 and then transferred to a nearby dry dock, where the final tests were being conducted.
Photo: CNA
As the submarine was being moved out of the factory to the floating dock, a large number of spectators, including news media, shot videos and photographs of the Hai Kun, which had only been seen publicly once before, at an unveiling event on Sept. 28 last year, during which the bow, torpedo tubes and other critical components were concealed beneath a national flag.
CSBC chairman Cheng Wen-lon (鄭文隆) said at the time the measure was taken so as not to reveal of confidential parts of the submarine for security reasons, pending further testing.
When the prototype was moved on Monday, many of the previously concealed parts were visible, including its intercept sonar, flank sonar array and torpedo tubes.
Photo: CNA
The military did not explain why those elements were revealed after previously being covered.
However, there were some parts, including the tail, that were shielded from view at last year’s ceremony and remained that way during the move.
Shu Hsiao-huang (舒孝煌) of government-funded think tank the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said the submarine’s tail remained shielded because “enemy forces” could estimate the prototype’s underwater speed and acoustic fingerprint by observing the number of its propellers, their angles and structural designs.
Retired navy captain Jiang Hsin- biao (江炘杓) said that yesterday’s tests at the dry dock were meant to make sure the submarine’s actual displacement is consistent with its original design.
Among the tests to be conducted would be an inclining test that is performed to determine the ship’s stability and the coordinates of its center of gravity.
Other tests at the dry dock would focus on separately testing the submarine’s equipment, ventilation system and engine, before running a comprehensive test by connecting the systems together, Jiang said.
Only after successful completion of the tests would the prototype move on to sea acceptance tests, the military and CSBC said.
Huang Shu-kuang (黃曙光), the head of Taiwan’s Indigenous Defense Submarine program, previously told reporters that the prototype would complete both sets of tests before being delivered to the navy at some point before the end of this year.
In other news, among the first batch of 655 draftees for the new one-year conscription period who reported for training last month, 117 have signed up to serve in the volunteer military force, the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday.
The figure, higher than the number of draftees who signed up last year during the same period of their four-month conscription, shows that the conscripts find the military and their salaries agreeable, Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) said.
The starting salary for conscripts was increased to more than NT$20,000 a month from NT$6,510 after the government extended compulsory military service from four months to one year.
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
INTENSIFYING THREATS: Beijing’s tactics include massive attacks on the government service network, aircraft and naval vessel incursions and damaging undersea cables China is prepared to interfere in November’s nine-in-one local elections by launching massive attacks on the Taiwanese government’s service network (GSN), a report published by the National Security Bureau showed. The report was submitted to the Legislative Yuan ahead of the bureau’s scheduled briefing at the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The national security team has identified about 13,000 suspicious Internet accounts and 860,000 disputed messages, the bureau said of China’s cognitive warfare against Taiwan. The disputed messages focus on major foreign affairs, national defense and economic issues, which were produced using generative artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed through Chinese
RSS