According to a report on September 9 by Taiwan’s Zhongshi News Network, the sea trial progress of Taiwan’s self-made prototype submarine“Haikun” has been delayed again and again, from May to September this year, the Taiwan International Shipbuilding Company, which is responsible for the construction of the haikun, also said it could complete the tests at the berth on October 15. However, it has now been revealed that 70 of the Sea Kun’s port tests have failed, and there are still calibration tests to be carried out. They will not be completed until the end of March next year at the earliest, while the sea tests will have to wait until after April, the Taiwan Navy has also extended the 2029 time for closing the case of the haikun. Ma Wen-chun, the KMT’s representative for public opinion, questioned this, implying that the “Haikun” had failed and was “Cutting down and retraining”.
Data map of Taiwan’s self-made submarine prototype“Hai Kun”.
The haikun was scheduled to be handed over in November 2025 to close the case, but Taiwan’s defence authorities approved a revision to the overall plan on July 17 this year, extending the time to 2029, Chinanews.com reported, four years. However, according to a military source, the haikun was due to be delivered in November 2025, as contracted, and the delay was for“System optimization, configuration adjustment, and testing of weapon systems.”.
According to Ma Wen-chun, the Haikun had problems from design to procurement in the first place, and it is not surprising that 70 tests on the ship’s outgoing berth have failed, as it is in a hurry to “Get into the water”, according to the report, many of the equipment is not the original factory, leading to professional teams to test, the Taiwan Navy can not come up with a guarantee and other predicament. She said all the submarine crews had been replaced and the case had been closed four years later, giving the impression of “Cutting down and re-training”, but that the Taiwanese military was unwilling to admit that it had De la cap?t. Ma Wen-chun also suspects that the first T $2bn budget for follow-on submarines next year will simply be used to reinforce the prototype and that the Navy should be clear about how the budget is used.
The report said that the Taiwan Legislature will review the budget during this session. The submarine budget in the Defense Department’s budget is one of the focuses of attention. The first wave of subsequent submarine budgets will cost NT $2 billion, ma Wen-chun thinks we should wait until the prototype is ready to go before we talk about the budget. Xu Qiaoxin, a KMT representative, agreed that the budget should be drawn up after the prototype sea trial, as it was a long-term project worth T $284BN, and inflation should also be taken into account. She advocated a budget freeze.
The haikun is Taiwan’s first self-built conventional submarine. However, due to Taiwan’s limited technical capability, although the submarine is called“Home-made”, it actually uses a large amount of imported equipment, there are also questions about Taiwan’s ability to integrate these disparate devices effectively. Construction began in November 2021 and the 2023 was launched in September. On 15 July this year, the submarine was towed to Pier 91 in Port of Kaohsiung for mooring tests. Taiwan’s“Freedom Times” said that the submarine had now been loaded with torpedoes and was originally expected to set sail for sea trials in September, guo XI, a former Taiwanese naval adviser, had even explicitly declared that“Sea trials will take place before September 15”, but he recently recanted that“It is a miracle that we will be able to sail before the end of this year”. Guo said that after Huang Shuguang, who had been in charge of the project, resigned, the Taiwanese ship was“Leaderless” and there were“Troublemakers” inside waiting to be laughed at, so the submarine“Can go out at the end of this year, is already a miracle.”. Guo also revealed that Taiwan vessel recently fired all of its overseas technical consultants to save money, making it difficult to build the same type of submarine.
The Taiwan Administration approved a plan to build its own submarines on August 22, with a budget of about T $284 billion to build seven new submarines, Taiwan’s United News Network reported earlier. Military expert on the island, Jie Zhong, has said that the test process of a prototype submarine is already more complicated than that of a surface vessel, and with the almost entirely new design of a homemade submarine, the risk is already high, many potential problems may only surface in the sea test stage, in the prototype boat“Haikun” has not yet sea test on the provision of production funds, I am afraid to cause budget distortion.