Taiwan advised to start small in bid to make submarines at home

As the 2016 presidential election edges closer, Taiwan's desire to build submarines at home has gained attention, with one submarine expert suggesting that Taiwan start with small 500-ton vessels.
Wang Jyh-perng, a Navy captain and associate research fellow at the Association for Managing Defense and Strategies, said Monday that for a beginner like Taiwan, building small ships would allow it to avoid the high costs in developing and producing submarines as big as the 3,000-ton Swordfish-class diesel sub it owns now.

It would also be easier for Taiwan to acquire the technologies needed if it aimed at smaller targets, Wang said while addressing a national defense policy blue paper released by the opposition Democratic Progressive Party last week.The party proposed that the military engage in "reverse engineering" on its Dutch-made Swordfish-class subs before moving to develop and build at least six 1,500-ton new subs, since it was almost impossible for Taiwan to buy submarines from other countries due to its political status.

Wang, who was once dispatched by the Navy to Holland to monitor the fabrication of the Swordfish-class subs in the 1980s, said it was not impossible for Taiwan to build a sub.But it would have to integrate the skills and technologies owned by its state-owned shipbuilding company, CSBC Corp., Taiwan with machine processing techniques of the private sector, he said.