World naval developments April 2018
By Norman Friedman*
Early in April the Administration announced that it had approved a marketing license allowing U.S. companies to sell technology Taiwan needs to build submarines domestically. Taiwan currently operates four elderly submarines, two ex-U.S. Guppies limited to a training role and two Dutch-built units delivered in 1987 and 1988. The country has been trying ever since to acquire more submarines, as they are the natural antidote to any attempt by China (PRC) to overrun the island. PRC acquisition of larger amphibious ships has, if anything, made the issue more urgent.
Chinese demographics have made submarines a more potent defense for Taiwan. For years the Chinese (PRC) government saw its vast population as a source of weakness, so it enforced a ‘one-child policy’ to reverse population growth. That worked, but it had an unintended consequence. At one time many in the West imagined that, given the sheer vastness of the Chinese population, its leaders would cheerfully employ human wave tactics, accepting enormous losses to win against technologically superior enemies. That is how Chinese tactics in Korea were interpreted, though not by Chinese historians. This view was also sometimes applied to Chinese World War II tactics. More recently, the death of a single Chinese soldier on a UN mission in Somalia caused great disquiet, because he had been a couple’s only child. Reportedly a few years ago Chinese government leaders dismissed a military proposal to take Taiwan at the cost of ‘only’ 20,000 deaths. That was apparently 20,000 too many – casualties on that scale would have shaken the government.
A Taiwanese submarine force could raise the price of invasion above what the Chinese leadership considered affordable, since the sinking of a single transport off Taiwan might well cost thousands of lives. Not surprisingly, the Chinese government has said that any attempt to sell submarines to Taiwan would grossly destabilize the situation – meaning that it might ultimately deter any assault on Taiwan.
In the past, Taiwanese efforts to buy submarines abroad have been stymied by Chinese pressure. The sheer size of the Chinese market has generally led European governments to block any sales to Taiwan, leaving the United States as its main arms supplier. That was true in the past, when the international submarine market was at its lowest, and HDW, the largest European builder, badly wanted the business. HDW thought that it could evade restrictions by exporting unarmed submarines to the United States, where they would be equipped with U.S. weapons and combat systems; HDW formed an alliance with Northrop-Grumman, and when the German yard was bought by the Chicago One bank it was generally assumed that it was acting for a U.S. defense company. This proposed deal was probably the basis of the 2001 announcement that the United States planned to supply eight submarines to Taiwan. The German government wrecked the deal with HDW, and a proposal that Northrop Grumman build them in the United States came to nothing. HDW had been negotiating with Taiwan beginning in 1986, and had signed a letter of intent in 1987, but the German government, which hoped for large Chinese sales, rejected the proposals both in 1993 and in 1995. The company seems to have expected to acquire a license for the unarmed submarines. Any possibility of such a deal ended when it was acquired by Thyssen Krupp, which already had large interests in China.
Similarly, the Dutch submarine builder badly wanted to supply new submarines (up to ten of them) of the type it had just built. It enjoyed support in the Dutch parliament, and the sales attempt lasted at least through 1996, when it was finally killed by the Dutch government. One oddity of this situation was that the United States had a legal interest in the submarines, which had been derived from the U.S. Barbel design. It is not clear whether the United States could have obtained building drawings on that basis, for construction in a U.S. yard. It is generally claimed that the U.S. Navy has resisted construction of diesel submarines in the United States for foreign users for fear that Congress would then force it to adopt them as a cheap alternative to nuclear craft, despite the vast difference in capability. When, for example, the question of U.S. purchase of submarines for Egypt was raised, the intent was to import foreign-built hulls and outfit them with a U.S. combat system (the Egyptians ultimately ordered German submarines with German systems). In the Egyptian case the key issue was that a foreign assistance sale required that whatever was provided had to have over 50 percent U.S. content.
Unfortunately for the Taiwanese, the U.S. offer came just before the outbreak of the War on Terror in 2001. Once the United States was heavily engaged in Central Asia, the Bush Administration had no great taste for initiatives which would cause trouble elsewhere, and the Chinese doubtless made it clear just how opposed to the sale they were. The German government raised enough trouble about the attempted sale to scotch it, and the Bush Administration did not want to expend scarce resources pursuing alternatives. Despite its pivot to Asia, which meant beginning to face down the Chinese, the successor Obama Administration seems to have considered submarines more trouble than they were worth, and they were not included in its 2010 arms package for Taiwan. By 2014 it was changing its mind.
It probably did not help that the Taiwanese themselves dithered between accepting deals which were good but not good enough and trying to build enough infrastructure on the island to build submarines locally. The deal that was not good enough was a reported Italian offer of eight used Sauro class submarines; the Taiwanese wanted only new ones. In 2002 their legislature pushed for local construction in the face of navy fears that such submarines would cost too much and might be defective. After considerable discussion, in 2012 the Taiwanese decided that they would build up to eight submarines in a protracted program. This would be a joint project between the state-owned China Ship Building Corporation, the Taiwanese military R&D organization (the Chang Shan Institute of Science and Technology [CSIST]), and the Taiwan navy. Reported displacement was 1200 to 3000 tons, which covers most current export diesel-electric submarines.
Once the Taiwanese announced that they were definitely building submarines, the U.S. government felt less pressure from the Chinese: the project would happen whether or not it helped. The Chinese could not be sure where plans would originate. For example, the Japanese already build their own diesel-electric submarines, which are considered among the best in the world. By 2014 there was considerable enmity between Japan and China, particularly over disputed islands (Taiwan has the same position as China in this particular dispute). Overall, Taiwan has been friendly to Japan thanks in large part to its favorable treatment as part of the old Japanese empire from 1894 on. Taiwanese warmth is such that many Chinese regard them as traitors, China having suffered so badly at Japanese hands during World War II. No deal between Taiwan and Japan has ever been announced, but it would not be surprising if some assistance had been offered. A few years ago Japan offered to build submarines for Australia, and very nearly won the contract involved.
On 15 April 2014 the Taiwan Defense Minister announced that the United States would be helping, but there was no U.S. announcement at the time. However, as an indication of U.S. interest in the Taiwan submarine force, in 2016 the United States approved sale of improved Mk 48 torpedoes (Mk 48 Mk 6AT). The two Dutch-supplied submarines are receiving a life-extension refit including a new U.S.-supplied combat system. In addition to extending the two submarines for another fifteen years, the upgrade will presumably 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; it claimed that this project 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 ‘red’ parts, i.e., those which Taiwan cannot produce for itself.
The program had apparently 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. Both resembled the existing ex-Dutch submarines, and may actually have been intended to announce the program to upgrade those craft.
The United States, at least in the form of the current Administration, is unlikely to respond to Chinese trade threats. Under the Obama Administration, the United States signed trade agreements which were expected to open the Chinese market to U.S. exports, opening some U.S. markets in return. This turned out to be a terrible bargain; about two million U.S. workers lost their jobs, but exports to China did not increase. If anything, the Chinese have typically taken whatever proprietary information they can from U.S. firms operating in their country and then passed them to Chinese companies. The loss of U.S. jobs was an important factor in the 2016 election, and President Trump’s voters will strongly support a stiff policy towards China. The President may also see the submarine deal as a means of exerting leverage against the Chinese in various negotiations.
At the least, the new National Security Strategy suggests that the United States should take measures designed to counter peer competitors – meaning China and Russia. A larger Taiwanese submarine force would help, because it would force the Chinese to divert resources into developing anti-submarine capability in order to keep their threat to invade Taiwan credible. That in turn would probably force a reduction in the Chinese ability to threaten U.S. use of the sea in the Far East – a major problem for us. In this sense support for a larger Taiwanese submarine force can and probably should be seen as an element in a larger U.S. strategy aimed at diverting the Chinese from spending their finite resources on naval programs we find most threatening.
* Norman Friedman is author of The Naval Institute Guide to World Naval Weapon Systems. His column is published with kind permission of the US Naval Institute.
