Taiwan currently has four submarines, two diesel-electric subs purchased from the Dutch, including the Sea Tiger shown here (foreground) and two ex-U.S. Navy GUPPY subs used for training only, including the Seal (background), whose keel was laid down in 1943. Kyodo/AP Images
The administration of President Donald Trump announced that it has approved a license that will allow U.S. companies to sell technology to Taiwan that the island nation needs to build diesel submarines domestically. Taiwan currently operates four elderly submarines—two ex-U.S. GUPPY boats used only for training and two Dutch-built units delivered in 1987 and 1988. The country has been trying to acquire additional subs with little success ever since, as the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been acquiring ever-larger amphibious ships for a possible invasion of the island nation. Submarines are a natural deterrent and response.
PRC demographics make submarines a potent defense for Taiwan. A Taiwanese submarine force could raise the price of invasion above what PRC leaders consider affordable, because the sinking of a single transport off Taiwan might well cost thousands of lives. Western analysts long have interpreted PRC tactics during the Korean War as “human waves” (accepting enormous losses to win against technologically superior enemies). Even if this understanding were correct—Chinese historians dispute it—the mainland government’s one-child policy has made any repetition of such tactics unacceptable. The death in 2016 of two People’s Liberation Army soldiers on a U.N. mission in South Sudan caused great disquiet in China.
Not surprisingly, the PRC government has said that any attempt to sell submarines to Taiwan will be unacceptable.
The sheer size of the mainland market generally has led European governments to block military sales to Taiwan, leaving the United States as its main arms supplier, even when European companies want the business badly. German manufacturer Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft (HDW), Europe’s largest submarine builder, tried several times in the 1990s and early 2000s to evade export restrictions through partnerships with General Dynamics’ Electric Boat division and Northrop Grumman’s Huntington Ingalls Industries. In some proposals, German designs would have been built in U.S. shipyards, while in others, German-built hulls and propulsions systems would have received weapon and sensor systems in U.S. yards. The German government vetoed each proposal. Thyssen Krupp, which has large interests in China, has since acquired HDW, almost certainly ending any further efforts by HDW to sell subs to Taiwan.
Similarly, the Dutch submarine builder Rotterdamsche Droogdok Maatschappij (RDM) wanted to supply new submarines (up to ten of them) to Taiwan, but the Dutch government killed any deal in 1996, despite support in the Dutch parliament. One oddity of this situation was that the United States had a legal interest in RDM’s designs, because they had been derived from the U.S. Navy’s Barbel-class design. It is not clear whether the United States could have obtained construction drawings for construction in a U.S. yard on that basis. The U.S. Navy generally is believed to resist construction of diesel submarines in the United States for foreign navies out of a fear that Congress then would force it to adopt them as a cheap alternative to nuclear boats.
Unfortunately for the Taiwanese, President George W. Bush’s proposal to sell Taiwan eight diesel subs came just months before the September 11 attacks. Once the United States became engaged in Central Asia, the Bush administration dropped many initiatives for fear of causing trouble elsewhere; the PRC doubtless made it clear just how opposed to the sale it was. The German government, which necessarily would have played a role, raised enough trouble to torpedo the proposal. Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, seems to have considered submarines more trouble than they were worth, despite his “pivot” to Asia, and they were not included in the 2010 arms package for Taiwan.
It probably did not help that the Taiwanese themselves dithered between accepting deals that were good but not good enough (an Italian offer of eight used Sauro-class submarines) and trying to build local infrastructure to construct submarines at home. In 2002, the legislature began pushing for domestic construction in the face of navy fears about the cost and quality of the used submarines. In 2012, the Taiwanese decided that they would build as many as eight “indigenous defense” submarines with a displacement between 1,200 and 3,000 tons, in a joint venture among the state-owned China Ship Building Corporation (CSBC), the Chang Shan Institute of Science and Technology (CSIST, Taiwan’s military research-and-development organization), and the Taiwan navy.
Once the Taiwanese announced that they were building submarines, the U.S. government felt less pressure from the PRC; the project would happen whether or not the United States participated. But who is designing the subs is not entirely clear. The Japanese build diesel-electric submarines that are considered among the best in the world, and the considerable enmity between Japan and China only has grown in this decade, particularly over disputed islands. (Though in a strange twist, Japan finds itself in opposition to both Taiwan and the PRC, on the issue of sovereignty over the Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands.)
Overall, Taiwan and Japan have good relations, thanks in large part to Taiwan’s favorable treatment as part of the old Japanese empire from 1894 on. Taiwanese warmth is such that many mainland Chinese regard the Taiwanese as traitors, with the mainland having suffered so badly at Japanese hands during World War II. No deal between Taiwan and Japan has been announced, but it would not be surprising if some assistance had been offered.
On 15 April 2014, the Taiwan Defense Minister announced that the United States would help its submarine program, but there was no similar U.S. announcement at the time. However, in 2016 the United States approved sale of improved Mk 48 Mod 6AT torpedoes. The two ex-Dutch submarines sold in the late 1980s are receiving life-extension refits, including new U.S.-supplied combat systems. The two submarines’ service lives will be extended for 15 years, and the upgrade presumably will supply CSIST and CSBC with insight into submarine structure and systems. In August 2016, CSBC announced that it was setting up a submarine development center at Kaohsiung, a project it claimed had been planned for a decade. In 2017, U.S. firms openly expressed interest in the Taiwanese program, but they had to await the marketing license granted this April. It allows supply of parts Taiwan cannot produce for itself. The program has progressed far enough that a model and an inboard sketch of a submarine were displayed at the September 2016 Kaohsiung International Maritime and Defense Exhibition. It resembles the existing ex-Dutch submarines.
The United States, at least during the Trump administration, is unlikely to respond to PRC trade threats. Under the Obama administration, the United States signed trade agreements that were expected to open the People’s Republic of China to U.S. exports and increase access to some U.S. markets in return. This turned out to be a terrible bargain; exports to the People’s Republic grew much more slowly than imports from there. The resulting loss of U.S. jobs (estimates range from a few hundred thousand net jobs lost to more than 2 million) alongside concerns about PRC theft of intellectual property were important factors in the 2016 election. President Trump’s voters appear strongly to support a stiff policy toward the PRC. As a result, the Trump administration certainly sees the submarine deal as leverage.
The December 2017 National Security Strategy indicates that the United States will take measures to counter peer competitors—that is, the People’s Republic of China and Russia. A larger Taiwanese submarine force would help, because it would force the PRC to divert resources to improve its antisubmarine capability, to keep their threat to invade Taiwan credible. That in turn might reduce the PRC’s ability to threaten U.S. use of the sea in the Far East—a major problem for the United States. In this sense, support for a larger Taiwanese submarine force can be seen as an element in a larger U.S. strategy aimed at diverting the Chinese from spending their finite resources on the naval programs the U.S. Navy finds most threatening.
Dr. Friedman is the author of the Naval Institute Guide to World Naval Weapon Systems published by and available from the Naval Institute Press.