October 31, 2026: Taiwan’s first of eight diesel-electric Hai Kun-class attack submarines, manufactured locally. The first is the ROCS (Republic of China Ship) Hai Kun/SS-711, launched in late 2023 and set to enter service by year-end. It is 70 meters long, uses diesel-electric propulsion with rechargeable lithium-ion batteries to extend submerged operations, and features an X-shaped stern rudder to improve shallow-water maneuverability.
Maximum depth is about 400 meters. It has six standard 533mm torpedo tubes that launch MK 48 Mod6 AT heavyweight torpedoes and UGM-84L Harpoon anti-ship missiles. The torpedoes use active or passive sonar to guide them to their targets.
Six years ago, Taiwan undertook an expensive upgrade to its defenses against a Chinese invasion. This included ordering nearly $2 billion in American weapons. The purchase includes 135 SLAM-ER Standoff Land Attack Missile - Expanded Response missiles, 11 HIMARS High Mobility Artillery Rocket System guided missile launchers, and 6 MS-110 reconnaissance pods.
The AGM-84K SLAM-ER entered service in 2000. It is a 675-kg cruise missile with a range of 270 kilometers, a speed of 855 kilometers per hour, and a GPS/shape-recognition guidance system that has proved very accurate. The pilot can change the target or abort the mission remotely at any time. SLAM-ER costs nearly a million dollars each and has a 220 kg warhead based on the one used on the Tomahawk cruise missile. SLAM-ER is a scaled-up Harpoon anti-ship missile.
HIMARS rocket launcher vehicles fire GPS-guided rockets at targets nearly a hundred kilometers distant. Half of the new HIMARS order uses heavier, armored trucks. These heavy trucks typically serve as wreckers to retrieve stuck vehicles. HIMARS can also fire larger, longer-range ATACMS rockets with a 300-kilometer range, as well as PrSM missiles with a 500-kilometer range.
Perhaps the most useful item ordered is the MS-110 reconnaissance pods. These are digital, high-resolution, multi-spectral camera pods, usually carried by an F-16 fighter jet. These pods look like large, streamlined bombs and use digital cameras to photograph large areas at high resolution and in Multispectral Imaging. This means the high-resolution digital photos are not only in color but also capture data across seven bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. This includes wavelengths visible and invisible to the human eye, making it difficult to hide objects and electronic signals with camouflage. This type of camera is superior to film cameras because it requires no film development, and software can analyze digital images more easily than relying mostly on human photo interpreters. The MS-110's infrared/heat sensor can record everything in the aircraft's flight path, horizon to horizon. This means the pod can be carried on an F-16 flying just outside Chinese territorial waters, which extend 22 kilometers from the coast, and photograph Chinese territory more than 300 kilometers inland. The pod records many gigabytes of data to onboard storage devices and can also transmit less detailed data immediately to a ground station. The pilot can also see what the pod sees, using one of the cockpit displays. Like targeting pods, recon pods are also designed to take high-resolution pictures of large swaths of terrain below, even as the aircraft moves at 15 kilometers per minute.
James F Dunnigan