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Taiwan's submarine saga
continues
By David Isenberg
The long-running saga surrounding the eight
diesel-electric submarines that the Bush administration
wants to sell to Taiwan as part of an arms sale package
originally announced in 2001, the largest weapons sale
to Taiwan from the United States in a decade, took some
interesting turns recently.
On November 10,
Taiwanese Defense Minister Tang Yiau-min reaffirmed the
island's determination to acquire conventional
submarines to beef up its defense capabilities.
This announcement came five days after the China
Times reported that Taiwan might back out of its plan to
buy the submarines, claiming they had been overpriced.
The paper quoted unidentified military sources as saying
that Washington had estimated that the eight
diesel-powered submarines could cost more than US$11
billion, more than double the market price. Some media
reports say that US authorities quoted outrageously high
prices for the vessels in an attempt to deter Taiwan
from purchasing them and to substitute them for other
weaponry systems such as Patriot missiles.
The
eight diesel-electric submarines that the United States
has promised to get for Taiwan will cost between US$8.6
billion and US$11.7 billion (NT$301 billion to NT$409
billion). The cost will depend on the tonnage of the
submarines - either 1,500 tons or 2,000 tons.
In
a rare visit to the Legislative Yuan in late October, a
group of US Navy officials actively lobbied for the
submarine deal. The 10-member group, headed by Gibson G
LeBoeuf, deputy chief of the US Navy International
Program Department, expressed its hope that Taiwan's
legislature would pass the budget for the submarine
project by next July to pave the way for speedy
implementation of the plan.
The group told
legislators that the eight submarines would be completed
in 2019 if the budget was approved by parliament next
year.
In principle, the Executive Yuan has
agreed to allocate a "special budget" of about NT$300
billion to NT$400 billion to support the
submarine-procurement project. But the government of
President Chen Shui-bian has indicated that its
submarine-procurement budget was only NT$150 billion,
less than one-third of what it is currently being
charged.
A lack of other suppliers has left
Taiwan without many options, as Spain, Germany and the
Netherlands have all declined to offer their equipment
for sale, for fear of offending Beijing.
Furthermore, Minister Tang said the navy would
only pay international market prices for the submarines.
"All the weapons to be purchased must not exceed fair
market prices while they are required to meet our
demands," he said. If the differences over the cost
cannot be resolved, the ROC (Republic of China) Navy
might switch to buying used submarines, sources said.
Taiwanese concern over the submarine costs has
had an effect back in Washington as well. Reportedly, in
an effort to sweeten the deal, the United States may
treat the island as "a major non-NATO ally", according
to a report in the China Times Express.
The
report said the US is considering including Taiwan in
its export-loan-guarantee mechanism for defense
procurements and in sharing precision satellite
reconnaissance photos in order to clinch the deal. The
possibly improved terms are also intended to prevent
squeezing Taiwan's budget for purchasing more US
military equipment, including long-range early-warning
radar systems.
Another issue complicating the
proposed deal is over who gets to build the subs. In
September, in line with a parliamentary resolution,
Taiwan's cabinet proposed to Washington that local
technicians should be engaged in building the submarines
to provide the state-run China Shipbuilding Corp (CSBC)
with the technical expertise.
In late October,
however, Taiwanese legislators demanded a technology
transfer as a condition for the purchase of eight
conventional submarines from the United States despite
US opposition to the plan. Under the new proposal,
Taiwanese technicians would build one-third of the third
and fourth submarines, and two-thirds of the fifth and
sixth ones before building the last two on its own.
Then on November 11 Major-General Huang
Suey-sheng, a Ministry of National Defense (MND)
spokesman, reiterated the ministry's support for the
government's policy of promoting the domestic
construction of warships.
As a member of a
supra-ministerial task force formed in late January, led
by Vice Premier Lin Hsin-i, for promoting the domestic
construction of warships, the MND will firmly support
government policy, Huang said.
Many Taiwanese
lawmakers have been pressing the government to lobby the
US authorities to commission the CSBC to build some of
the submarines, which the United States can no longer
construct, as it only makes nuclear submarines.
Although no company has yet been named as a
potential prime contractor, mainly due to the fact that
many have declined out of fear of offending Beijing, the
US naval delegation revealed a list of four main
contractors for the provision of weapons systems for the
submarines. They include General Dynamics, Northrop
Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.
Although
the LeBoeuf team said Taiwan is still not suitable for
building submarines, the CSBC is capable of assembling
ship hulls of all kinds of vessels and the prices can be
accurately calculated if the submarines were built by
CSBC, according to Legislative Yuan President Wang
Jin-pyng, who is also a vice chairman of the opposition
Kuomintang.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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