Radio Free Asia (RFA), which “operates under a [US] Congressional mandate”, reports, November 1, 2022:
“Taiwan’s domestic submarine plans are no match for China’s analysts say”
“[Taiwan's] navy plans to build as many as 8 [indigenous submarines] while [mainland China (PRC)] may add more than 20 in coming years.”
Taiwan’s navy says it is on course to launch its first domestically built submarine by May 2024, amid skepticism about the effectiveness of [Taiwan's] indigenous submarine program.
… Taiwan started building its Indigenous Defensive Submarine fleet in November 2020 at a new submarine factory in the southern port city of Kaohsiung.
Skepticism over indigenous submarines
… Some analysts have however raised questions about the effectiveness of the indigenous submarine program.
Liao Hongxiang, a former lecturer at the Taiwan War College, told local media that the contracted company, CSBS, has “no past performance” in building submarines.
“Since Taiwan has absolutely no experience in the design and manufacture of submarine subsystems, the unit price of each diesel-electric submarine is more than twice that of other countries' [Pete Comment: eg. Japan's] similar submarines,” Liao said.
There is a large gap between the submarine forces of Taiwan and China and, according to the analyst, even with eight new submarines, the Taiwanese Navy still cannot compete with the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s fleet.
China is believed to have around 70 submarines, including a dozen that are nuclear-powered. The number of Chinese nuclear submarines is likely to increase to 21 by 2030, according to the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence [in 2022] .
Instead of acquiring new subs, Liao suggested that the Navy could deploy surveillance systems to early detect enemy submarines in Taiwan’s waters and use smart naval mines and long-range anti-submarine rockets to neutralize them.
Grant Newsham, a retired U.S. Marine colonel who spent a year studying Taiwan’s defense system, also suggested sea mines, “especially the 'smart' kinds.”"
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Pete Comment
Other sources indicate the PRC itself has deployed a ring of seafloor surveillance systems around Taiwan. These are cued to detect Taiwanese and US submarines and warships.
These PRC surveillance systems are networked to alert PRC submarines and other PRC ASW platforms to quickly destroy "enemy" submarines.
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SEE WHOLE US RFA ARTICLE HERE