How about some Kilos? You could probably buy the entire Ukrainian navy for $5 Billion.
Posted on 12/19/2002 1:01:58 PM PST by Citizen of the Savage Nation
U.S. kicks off Taiwan submarine competition Wednesday December 18, 6:47 pm ET By Jim Wolf
WASHINGTON, Dec 18 (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy on Wednesday kicked off a potential $4.5 billion competition to help Taiwan buy up to eight conventional submarines, despite strong opposition from China.
ADVERTISEMENT The Naval Sea Systems Command, which designs, builds and acquires ships for the U.S. Navy, outlined its plans for the diesel-electric submarines at a two-day session attended by four top U.S. defense contractors.
The briefing for industry wound up Wednesday. The competition will be limited to General Dynamics Corp. (NYSE:GD - News), Northrop Grumman Corp. (NYSE:NOC - News), Raytheon Co. (NYSE:RTN - News) and Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE:LMT - News), the government said on its Federal Business Opportunities Web site.
President Bush approved Taiwan's request for the submarines in April 2001 as the centerpiece of the biggest package of proposed arms sales to the island in a decade. The Navy would transfer them under the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program, which is used for government-to-government weapons sales.
The Navy said it wanted construction to begin by 2006, based on funding of a design it hoped to pick by 2004 or 2005, people familiar with the presentation said.
The Navy's International Program Office said it planned to help Taiwan develop a "realistic budget" for the craft, which the non-partisan U.S. Congressional Research Service has estimated could cost $4.5 billion.
Supplying such submarines is extremely complex, fraught with military, diplomatic and technology-transfer implications. It involves the military balance between Taiwan and the mainland. Beijing has threatened to use force to return Taiwan to the fold if the island declares formal independence or drags its feet in unification talks.
The United States has not manufactured diesel submarines for nearly 50 years since the Navy, prodded by Admiral Hyman Rickover, opted to rely exclusively on nuclear-fueled submarines.
The world's biggest exporters of diesel submariners -- Germany and the Netherlands -- have ruled out building submarines or licensing designs that would go to Taiwan. They are unwilling to anger China, which regards Taiwan as a renegade province.
[But yet the Germans seem very willing to anger the US - Citizen]
People familiar with the Navy's thinking described the procurement strategy as based on using an existing design. One possibility under consideration by at least some of the contractors was based on the 1,925-ton Dolphin class submarines built in German shipyards for the Israeli Navy and delivered in 1997.
Another possibility could involve the hiring of experts from the Netherlands' Rotterdamse Droogdok Maatschappij, which sold its Zwaardvis-class submarine design to Taiwan in the 1980s for two Hai Lung (Sea Dragon)-class submarines, a European expert said.
Among those invited to the Navy's briefing on the submarine project, in addition to the four companies in the running, were "known contractors possessing modern diesel electric submarine designs currently in use or under construction for use in navy arsenals," a Dec. 9 announcement on the federal business opportunities Web site said.
At the session, the Navy said it was seeking a logistics approach that maximized self-sufficiency in maintenance and doled out much of the work to Taiwan's China Shipbuilding Corp.
Frank Carlucci, a former U.S. defense secretary who is the outgoing chairman of the U.S. Taiwan Business Council, a private group, said the Taiwan authorities seemed determined to buy the submarines.
"I think it's a budget question," he told reporters at a briefing at which he had been due to introduce his succcessor, another former U.S. defense secretary, William Cohen. Cohen did not participate.
The submarine contract is likely to figure prominently at a U.S.-Taiwan defense conference to be held Feb. 12-14 in San Antonio, Texas, the second in an annual series organized by the business council.
Americans getting back into the diesel sub business are going to make a LOT of foreign subs look like clunkers.
You make have something there, old sport...
The development of the Type 212 will allow the German navy to support the requirements of NATO. The new submarines differ in principle from the conventional, classical submarines of German development. The size alone amounts to with approximately 1830 tons displacement, more than the three-fold greater than the existing conventional submarines.
The outstanding feature of this new type of submarine is its air-independent propulsion system using a silent hydrogen/oxygen fuel cell system which not only makes the submarine more difficult to detect, but also increases the time it can stay submerged. The class 212 submarine is the first in the world to be equipped with this rovolutionary propulsion system. Its performance has already been successfully tested on a German Navy submarine.
Its hybrid diesel-electric and air-independent fuel-cell propulsion system will meet the vital requirement for low detectability. A noiseless propeller will be driven by a low-noise, high-performance, permanent-magnet motor. The reactants for the fuel cell (hydrogen and oxygen) will be stored in the after part of the boat between the pressure hull and an outer, free-flooding hull. The detection-probability requirement will be met also by reducing the boat's acoustic, magnetic, radar, and visual signatures and by minimizing the sonar target strength (against active detection) and sonar target level (against passive detection). The pressure hull, made of high-strength nonmagnetic steel, is optimized for hydrodynamic properties and maneuverability.
For military applications, the advantages of an extremely quiet power source confer great tactical benefits and the current disadvantages of relatively low output compared to its size and weight mean that the first large units are in underwater systems. The latest additions to the German shipbuilder HDW's highly successful Type 209 family of submarines, the Type 212 (ordered by Germany and Italy), the Type 214 (ordered by Greece), and the Type 800, are all fuel cell powered. A submarine that uses fuel cells rather than a diesel engine to recharge its batteries produces much less sound while doing so, and consequently the effective detection range of many of the current passive acoustic sonobuoys is reduced.
Thank Goodness for the Euroweenies.
Heaven knows we can't rely on Rumsfeld to keep our shipyards afloat.
Yep, what is the big freaking deal with those Euros, getting hyped up about weapons going to Taiwan and ISrael, but selling deathwares to all the thugs around them... they must be surrendering again. Europe has no heart, what is left there is what ware they have, that is why they behave that way. Still, we have feelings too.
Rummy worries me too. Dont like nukes, dont like rockets, dont like subs, all these important stuff...
It would never occur to Rummy to do anything to weaken the U.S. in ANY industrial or military sector. But he will follow orders. I don't know at what point he would resign over idiotic orders, but we apparently haven't seen sufficiently idiotic orders yet for him to pull out of the Administration.
How about some Kilos? You could probably buy the entire Ukrainian navy for $5 Billion.
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