Replies

LOL. CHECK THE LINK BELOW!!! Is the friend you sent this to for an informed reply still in the Taiwanese Legislature??. Folks like Lee Ching-hua want Independence as long as it doesn't cost them and Taiwanese money or Taiwanese blood.
From now on, try to form your own opinions, don't rely on other people to form them for you. See the link below, I could refute it point by point, but hey, do I know more than a distinguished member of the Taiwan's Legislative Yuan?

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/taiwan/2001/taiwan-010425.htm

"- That its mechanical 3D radar system is less sophisticated than the Aegis radar system of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, which HE claimed are the backbone of the U.S. Navy, while its air surveillance capability is not as good as that of early-warning surveillance aircraft"

Whether Lee is in the legislature or not does not obviate the fact that 1) you falsely claimed the American shipyards build diesel submarines-they don't 2) that the Kidd class is equipped with the Aegis Missile System. It is not.
Here is the news from the Bush administration:
On April 24, 2001, President George W. Bush authorized the sale of a major package of arms to Taiwan, including destroyers, diesel-powered submarines, and anti-submarine aircraft, but he deferred Taipei's request for U.S. destroyers equipped with the advanced Aegis combat system.

Is Jane's a good enough source for you?

A major arms package, but no AEGIS, for Taiwan

By Peter Felstead, janes.com Web Editor

China was today lodging official protests over the US announcement yesterday of a major arms deal for Taiwan: a move that signals a continued US preparedness to support the island state that Beijing has always considered a renegade province.

A sizeable package
The arms package announced for Taiwan yesterday may be even larger than the biggest previous US sale to the island: the 1992 supply of 150 F-16 fighters worth US$6 billion. Its major components are as follows:
# Four Kidd-class destroyers (currently mothballed). Further details of the Kidd-class destroyer are available here.
# Eight diesel-electric patrol submarines
# 12 P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft
# Paladin self-propelled howitzers
# MH-53E minesweeping helicopters
# AAV7A1 amphibious assault vehicles
# Avenger surface-to-air missiles
# Submarine- and surface-launched torpedoes

The defence package agreed for Taiwan was influenced largely by the build-up of missiles facing Taipei from the Chinese mainland, although the recent strain in Sino-US relations over the collision between a US EP-3 surveillance aircraft and a Chinese J-8 interceptor will not have put the US government in a conciliatory mood. China critics in the US Congress were dismayed by President Bush stopping short of selling Taiwan warships equipped with the AEGIS integrated combat system, but they were somewhat mollified by the decision to go ahead with the supply of submarines. These would provide a potent blockade-breaking capability and serve as a deterrent to any invasion of Taiwan by the People's Liberation Army.

Submarines from where?
How these submarines will be supplied is another matter, since the USA no longer has an indigenous capability to build diesel-electric patrol submarines. One obvious potential source of supply would have been the link-up between US companies Litton Ingalls Shipbuilding and Lockheed Martin and Dutch boatbuilders RDM, a joint venture formed to offer Moray class submarines to Egypt.

RDM, however, has been blocked in the past from selling submarines direct to Taiwan by the Dutch government - despite the Dutch having supplied Taiwan's two Hai Lung-class patrol submarines in 1987/88. Yesterday a Dutch Foreign Ministry spokesman told the Bloomberg News Service that current Dutch policy meant that "no weapons are to be sold to Taiwan or to third parties for resale to Taiwan".

Germany would be a possible alternative source, but Berlin, too, has shied away from selling submarines to Taiwan for fear of incensing the Chinese. A spokesman for German Chancellor Gerhard Shroeder told Bloomberg yesterday: "We wouldn't permit the sale."

France, which also builds diesel-electric submarines, has in the past supplied Taiwan with six Kang Ding (La Fayette) class frigates, Mirage 2000 fighters and other weapons - but at the cost of much deteriorated relations with Beijing.

Still waiting for you to name the US shipyard that builds diesel subs. In the interim, I will defer to Jane's