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Taiwan’s Hai Kun Class Submarines Are in Big Trouble

Hai Kun-Class Submarine
Hai Kun-Class Submarine. Image Credit: Taiwan Government.

Key Points and Summary: Taiwan’s Hai Kun-class submarine program aims to bolster its naval defense, but significant design issues, procurement delays, and maintenance concerns have emerged.

-The first vessel, Hai Kun SS-711, has faced multiple defects and won’t be operational until 2029—four years behind schedule.

-Taiwan’s plan to procure seven more submarines before resolving these issues raises concerns about incompatibility and logistical complexity.

-With evolving supplier chains and construction methods from the US, Japan, and Europe, experts warn of a “maintenance nightmare.”

-Can Taiwan overcome these hurdles and create an effective deterrent against China’s growing naval presence?

Taiwan’s Hai Kun-Class Submarine Faces Delays and Design Issues

The Republic of China (ROC) Navy on Taiwan has had a domestic submarine program, the Hai Kun-class (named for the first ship to be launched), also known as the Indigenous Defense Submarine (IDS) project, underway for many years. 

The goal is to build a fleet of attack submarines under the ROC’s “Domestic Ship, Domestically Built” policy that will be constructed in shipyards of the national CSBC Corporation.

Hai Kun-Class: Taiwan’s Submarine Program, Explained 

So far, the Hai Kun SS-711 is the single boat that has been produced in this class.  

This sub was launched in early 2024 from the CSBC shipyards in Kaohsiung and there are another seven planned before there are enough new submarines accepted into the fleet to be able to retire older models currently in service. 

The Hai Kun class visually appears to be an evolution of the design for the Dutch Walrus-class that features a hybrid single/double hull.  

There are other main common configuration similarities which include the X rudder that is seen on the Royal Netherlands Navy boats.

This class of submarine has 6 torpedo tubes, two sets of six-mounted small openings for torpedo decoy launchers and another 23 discharge ports for launching countermeasures.  

Most of the other official specifications have yet to be released outside of ROC armed forces channels.  

Basic dimensional data such as length and displacement have still not been unclassified. 

Sensors and Other Advanced Systems 

Although there is this resemblance to the Dutch design, the Hai Kun-Class boats are said to have been brought up to date by incorporating many new and more modern systems from the US, Europe and Japan.  

Hai Shih-class submarines from Taiwan

Hai Shih-class submarines from Taiwan that need to be replaced.. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

There has been support from the US for the design and the boats will be assembled using Japanese construction techniques in the ROC shipyard.  

A Japanese team composed by hiring retired engineers from Mitsubishi and Kawasaki Heavy Industries are unofficially credited with also providing technical support for the program.

Commentators taking only an external view of the boat observe the different sonar configurations show “a cylindrical sonar interception unit above the bow and a large conformal passive array sonar on the lower side of the hull.”

Taiwan's World War II-era Submarine. Image Credit: ROC Navy.

Taiwan’s World War II-era Submarines. Image Credit: ROC/Taiwan Navy.

The bow and side sonars together form the “Ear of the Sea”. The side-looking sonar located at the bottom of the side of the Hai-Kun can be said to be the important “ears” of the entire system.  

There are also three protruding drum-like appendages on the upper hull, suspected of being a tri-element ranging sonar.

Procurement Pains for Hai Kun-Class

This design is the first domestically-made submarine for the ROC, and has undergone considerable criticism for some irregular procedures, one of which was officially “launching” the ship in September 2023 without it ever actually touching water.  

Numerous unconfirmed reports were that subsequent design in-port tests had uncovered what Chinese-language reports called “dozens of defects”.  

Without these tests while still at moorings not being completed successfully, there was no way to proceed on to sea trials.

The ROC Navy has gone into a mode of what the same Chinese-language sources describe as a low profile, which is largely due to the fact that before the ship can ever be fully accepted into service it must not only pass sea trials but combat trials as well.  

This causing some embarrassing delays with the date for the delivery and settlement of this first in its class boat now postponed for four years until sometime in 2029.  There are also – as happens frequently in the ROC – questions about “the progress and effectiveness of the budget execution.”

The new ROC government under recently-elected president Willian Lai is also under fire for proposing the go-ahead be given for the next seven subs in this class to begin procurement without clarifying the causes behind the defects in the first model currently undergoing these above mentioned tests.

Complicating matters is that technology evolution and component design replacement cycles run orders of magnitude faster than the ROC procurement cycles.  The impact on the program is that the approved configuration for these next seven boats has yet to be determined and is almost constantly shifting.

Consequently, It is now expected that the first batch of the seven follow-up ships may have numerous differentiations from the second batch and that the third batch will differ still further with more incompatibilities.  

These submarines having different configurations and lack of uniformity in major component subsystems across a force of eight boats will be, in the word of one long-time defense analyst based in Taipei, a “maintenance nightmare.”

“Because of all the one-off aspects of this design – based on a Dutch submarine, but US technical assistance, Japanese construction methods, evolving supplier chains for the on-board systems,” he continued, “supporting these in service could require the personnel and effort normally called for a fleet three times its size.

About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson

Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is now an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw.  He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design.  Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.

Written By

Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is now an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw and has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments and the Australian government in the fields of defence technology and weapon systems design. Over the past 30 years he has resided at one time or another in Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.

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