Haikun: Taiwan unveils new submarine to fend off China
Haikun: Taiwan unveils new submarine to fend off China
Named after a mythical massive fish, the Haikun is Taiwan's first domestically made submarine.
Taiwan has unveiled its first domestically-made submarine as it bolsters its defences against a possible Chinese attack.
President Tsai Ing-wen presided over the launch ceremony in the port city of Kaohsiung on Thursday.
US officials have warned that China could be militarily capable of mounting an invasion within the next few years.
Taiwan is a self-governing island which China regards as a renegade province and has vowed to reclaim one day.
To be honest I'm more interested in hearing about how drones could come into it given the success they've seen in Ukraine with both naval and air drones. It seems like investing in huge amounts of those could be a very cost effective way to make crossing the straight an absolute nightmare.
Drones are a lot less effective against even a slightly trained military. And, hardware aside, China doesn't seem to be slacking on that.
And computer vision makes that even easier. Set up a few cameras with raspberry pis taped to them and you can detect and deal with "slap a brick of C4 on a quad copter" level drones. Same with just having a few mics rigged up to the frequency of quadcoptor motors. Similarly, even just having mesh netting over air fields and supply depots goes a long way toward stopping grenades.
The fact that this continues to have any meaningful effect on the russian advances mostly just speaks to how incredibly untrained and undisciplined they all are.
The other side of drones is the "Fuck yeah, America" style death from above that kills small children in their homes. And those are more or less just cheaper fighter jets.
I'm sorry, you seem to be trivializing how much a difference drone warfare is making right now.
It is not through the incompetence of Russians that the drones are so effective. They are effective because they can pop up at the least expected of times. Can easily be deployed near or even on the frontline. They are much much cheaper than the intended target. So you can send dozens of drones to destroy one parked plane or docked ship.
How do you propose your raspberry pi deals with said drone? Lets somehow assume it has a 100% detection rate, what are you going to do about it? Those tiny $2000 drones dropping grenades may only injure a handful of troops but it is enough to stall an advance or pin down enemy movement. Shooting a tiny target 60m in the air is harder than it looks.
How do you protect from multiple low profile unmanned boats laden with explosives coming at your warship in the dead of night on a moonless night?
Make no mistake drones are a game changer. They will not outright win the war, but they bring many advantages to a battlefield. Even just the live feed updates that can allow commanders a birds eye view of the battlefield in real time will change maneuver warfare. I haven't even started on 6th Gen fighters with fighter drone integration
I remember they are already well supplied with those. If China comes knocking they will, at the very least most a big chunk of their navy.
I agree, for the cost of a single cruise missile, you could deploy literally thousands of expendable drones upon a target. Death by a thousand booms.
Got to be daunting facing a large and well equipped enemy, and hearing people give predictions about which year they'll invade. Would hope it would be a Ukraine like situation where they defy expectations, but who knows.
I have said it many times but Taiwan and Ukraine are very different situations.
Ukraine? We were all ready to abandon them the night of the invasion. Hell, we did exactly that when russia stole Crimea. Various nations provided limited support but it really boiled down to (speculation) russia taking too long between bombardment and getting troops to that airfield.
Taiwan? That won't happen. Because even though TSMC is "branching out", the vast majority of the "good" semiconductors still come out of Taiwan and will for at least the next decade or two (likely longer since Taiwan based TSMC won't be sleeping). Taiwan falling will pretty much destroy the tech hardware parts of the economy overnight and lead to mass shortages that basically every "global north" country will have to deal with. And there is zero chance that Taiwan doesn't blow up the fabs as a "last one out gets the light" scenario.
Systematic rape and ethnic cleansing? We sleep. Not having highway assist in new cars? Mother fuckers, we dare winnie the poo to launch some nukes because it is on.
The more Taiwan can do to provide deterrents, the better. But you can bet all those :NATO won't engage in a war that doesn't involve defending one of our member states" excuses will go out the door as fast as it always does when we decide we give a shit.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Building their own submarines has long been a key priority for Taiwan's leaders, but the programme accelerated under Ms Tsai who has revved up military spending to nearly double its budget during her tenure.
The head of the domestic submarine programme Admiral Huang Shu-kuang told reporters last week that the goal was to fend off any attempt from China to encircle Taiwan for an invasion or impose a naval blockade.
But the "centre of gravity" for any China-Taiwan naval conflict would not likely be in the deep waters off the island's east coast, where submarines would be most effective in, pointed out Drew Thompson, a visiting senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore and former US Department of Defense official.
Adm Huang told Nikkei Asia he had personally approached military contacts in the US, Japan, South Korea and India for help but did not specify which country eventually agreed.
The fact that several countries and companies were "not afraid to supply parts to a marquee defence programme in Taiwan... indicates a significant geopolitical shift", noted Mr Thompson.
The launch comes a day after Beijing confirmed it had been conducting military drills this month to "resolutely combat the arrogance of Taiwan independence separatist forces".
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