The National Interest
Date: August 4, 2018
By: Sebastien Roblin
Taipei would like to acquire newer submarines, but it is confronted with a series of major obstacles.
Taiwan’s defense planners have a uniquely unenviable mission—the defacto island state of twenty-three million somehow seeks to deter an invasion from mainland China, a rising superpower only a hundred miles away.
Realistically, the breakaway Republic of China cannot hope to prevail in a knockdown-dragout fight with Beijing. However, Taipei’s gambit is to make such a battle so potentially costly that Beijing will not be tempted to abandon its strategy of seeking reunification through peaceful means.
Submarines could potentially prove a useful conventional deterrence to attack by interdicting the waters around Taiwan from amphibious landing ships and harrying the PLA Navy’s numerically superior naval forces, while remaining submerged at sea to avoid attacks by China’s land-, sea- and air-launched anti-ship missiles.
However, the Republic of China Navy (ROCN) has only four submarines. Two of these, the Hao Si and Hai Pao, are American Tench-class boats that date back to the end of World War II. The oldest submarines still in service anywhere on the world, they are used only for training purposes. [FULL STORY]