Sub conducts shallow-water submerged tests

‘MILESTONE’: President William Lai said that the trials demonstrated that Taiwan is among the few countries in the world that can build their own submarines

• By Su Yung-yao and Jake Chung / Staff reporter, with staff writer

The Hai Kun (海鯤) prototype submarine on Friday conducted “shallow-water submerged tests” following its first submerged test a day earlier, which CSBC Corp, Taiwan, the primary contractor of the indigenous defense program, said was successful.

CSBC did not disclose the depths to which the submarine descended, although sources said that the operations took the vessel to 50m on Thursday and 100m on Friday.

“The successful submerged sea trials of the Hai Kun are an important milestone in the navy’s history of autonomous shipbuilding,” President William Lai (賴清德) wrote on social media on Friday.

“Despite the challenges, the navy, CSBC and other companies involved in building the submarine have resolved issues and completed what others had described as mission impossible,” Lai said.

“The success in building the Hai Kun means that Taiwan is now among the few countries in the world that can autonomously build submarines,” he said, adding that the efficiency with which Taiwan built the vessel was commendable.

National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) yesterday wrote on X that the successful tests were “a major step forward for our deterrence capabilities.”

It has been more than four years since the keel of the Hai Kun, or Narwhal in English, was laid in November 2021.

CSBC said that the construction timeline was faster than for submarines built by other governments, such as the UK’s Upholder-class and South Korea’s KSS-II-class vessels, which took six-and-a-half and five years respectively.

The cost of the Hai Kun — NT$37.9 billion (US$1.2 billion), excluding torpedoes and storage facilities — is also moderate compared with foreign diesel-electric submarine programs, with South Korea’s Jang Bogo-class submarines costing the equivalent of NT$78.4 billion and Germany’s Type 214s costing NT$95.9 billion, it said.

The Hai Kun was originally scheduled to complete sea trials by November last year, but the schedule was pushed back as it underwent final adjustments ahead of the submergence tests.

Completion of the sea trials is crucial to the indigenous defense program, as it would trigger the release of NT$1 billion for seven subsequent submarines.

The legislature froze the funds last year.

With the Hai Kun undergoing submergence tests, a major component of Taiwan’s defense infrastructure is nearing completion.

However, a senior defense official on Friday said that if the legislature in 2005 had not blocked critical funding for submarine procurement, eight submarines Taiwan was to purchase from the US would have been delivered that year.

That would have made it much harder for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy to pressure Taiwan in the Taiwan Strait, significantly altering the security dynamics in the first island chain, they said.

In 2001, the administration of then-US president George W. Bush announced plans to sell eight diesel-electric submarines to Taiwan, alongside Patriot missile systems and P-3C anti-submarine aircraft.

However, due to political gridlock at the time, the budget for the submarines was blocked 69 times in legislature’s Procedure Committee, ultimately causing the deal to fall through, the official said.

Additional reporting by Hung Chen-hung and CNA