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Taiwan to learn from Cheonan incident
By Wang Jyh-perng ¤ý§ÓÄP
Wednesday, Jun 09, 2010, Page 8
On May 20, South Korea announced the results of an
investigation by a team of 25 military experts and scientists from five
countries into the March sinking of the South Korean corvette Cheonan. The
report concluded that the ship had been sunk by a North Korean CHT-02D torpedo
fired from a submarine.
The following is a purely military interpretation of what Taiwan can learn from
the incident.
First of all, the submarine is a weapon that gives weaker parties an asymmetric
advantage. The US and South Korea have not made clear that at the time the
Cheonan was sunk, they were engaged in a large-scale joint military exercise. If
the evidence is correct, then the question arises how the North Korean submarine
managed to slip through their monitoring system along with high-tech navy and
air force anti-submarine measures. This highlights shortcomings and weaknesses
in the US and South Korean high-tech navies¡¦ submarine surveillance
capabilities.
On May 30, the New York Times ran an article saying that the US military was
very surprised that a South Korean warship could be so easily sunk by a torpedo
from a North Korean submarine and unable to detect and stop this kind of attack
after having spent such huge sums on its navy over many years.
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, also said in an
interview that the US and South Korea are now planning a joint military exercise
with the long-term objective of developing ways to stop this kind of miniature
submarine, although that would seem to be a very difficult problem, both
technically and tactically.
In response to the Korean conflict, the US dispatched the Seventh Fleet¡¦s
carrier battle group to participate in exercises and for monitoring purposes.
However, as South Korean President Lee Myung-bak gave a speech to the nation
announcing that his government would block North Korean merchant ships from
passing through the Jeju Strait, four North Korean Shark-class submarines left
the Chaho naval base in northeastern North Korea and then disappeared without a
trace. The question now is if other similar incidents will occur.
Second, President Ma Ying-jeou (°¨^¤E) and his administration have not expressed
clear support for obtaining submarines. Although the provocative actions of
North Korea, are not to be imitated, the sinking of the Cheonan is significant
from a strategic military perspective because it makes clear that a party that
finds itself at a disadvantage can still gain an asymmetric advantage and that
the submarine is one weapon to accomplish this.
In addition, it is impossible to determine whether modern weaponry, expensive or
cheap, is of an offensive or a defensive character. Instead, that will depend on
the user. Ma¡¦s national defense policies are focused on defense, but then to
define the submarine as an offensive weapon is biased. This is why for many
years I have stressed the necessity of developing short-range submarines to deal
with China¡¦s rising force. That option is both inexpensive and effective.
Ma keeps stressing that Taiwan must develop sufficient defensive strength, but
director of the US-based Taiwan Security Analysis Center Fu Mei (±ö´_¿³), a
long-time observer of Taiwan¡¦s defense, said on May 14 that while Ma over the
past year or more has made repeated public calls for US arms sales, in practice
he has not been pushing very hard.
Maybe the western Pacific will not see full-blown war in the future, but there
will always be a possibility for conflict. At the moment, the cross-strait
situation is relaxed, but in the future, Taiwan must seriously consider how to
deal with and prevent domestic Chinese problems from developing into external
conflict.
Wang Jyh-perng is an associate research fellow at the
Association for Managing Defense and Strategies.
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