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.
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.
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It would also buy time until US and Japan forces arrive to aid Taiwan’s defence, he added.
Doubt. You think Japan and the US are going to put actual troops on Taiwan?
Yes
Have you looked at a map recently?
Have you looked at the US’s massive military aimed towards that exact sort of power projection recently?
China would have to destroy Taiwan before being able to set foot on it. It’s not like Ukraine, there’s no massing troops on borders. It’s small beaches and massive cliffs.
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/4/4/how-difficult-would-it-be-for-china-to-invade-taiwan
What does that have to do with whether the US would help? Their interests are in the sea rights in that area, not just with Tiwan as a trading partner.
I think if an invasion was coming, us troops would be stationed in Taiwan as a deterrent, so that if they were killed there would be a lot of political will to fight back. And once an invasion starts, the US would still want to keep that part of the world in it’s sphere of influence.
No chance any president is putting troops on Taiwan, the USA has a one China policy, Taiwan is not officially recognised as a sovereign state.
China’s military is untested. Russia has shown how badly military campaigns can go.
Zero appetite for a hot conflict on all sides.
Are you saying China won’t invade? I tend to agree with you, and I definitely hope you’re right. But I don’t see why the US wouldn’t intervene if there was an invasion.
As for one China, that position is strategically ambiguous to create the least change of an invasion. See here: https://youtu.be/809H6hy37nI
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.
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.
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Cheaper fighter jets? I thought drones were much more expensive than jets.
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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
Through drones we are seeing a first hand view of the war. First time I’ve seen a person shot, someone blown up. It’s not like the Hollywood films that’s for sure.
No bleeding, missing arms like every war film in Hollywood. You don’t see anything, they get shot and just become lifeless. No visible blood or anything. Similarly the drone dropped grenades, I would have thought they would be missing body parts.
But on the outside you wouldn’t even know it’s terminal injuries. And there was another one where the tank commander landed on the roof due to a cook off in what seemed to be in one piece. But then someone calculated the G force as 300gs.
Thanks to drones I now know people mostly go out on a whimper and not a bang.
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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”.
The original article contains 1,041 words, the summary contains 205 words. Saved 80%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
