Taiwan plans to build a new 'stealth' warship armed with guided-missiles next year in response to China's naval build-up, a top military officer and a lawmaker said Monday.
Construction of the prototype of the 500-tonne corvette is due to start in 2012 for completion in 2014, deputy defence minister Lin Yu-pao said in answer to a question by Kuomintang party legislator Lin Yu-fang at parliament.
It will use locally built anti-ship missiles. It is good that Taiwan can build some weapons so it doesn't have to worry about Chinese pressure on foreign arms sales to Taiwan.
Still, anything operating in the Taiwan Strait won't survive that long if it lives on the surface. With Colombian drug gangs able to build honest-to-God submarines (not the semi-submersibles they've been building for a while), you'd think that Taiwan would be wise to build really small coastal subs and work their way up the chain to building real submarines. Unless Russia agrees to sell them to Taiwan or India sells some second-hand boats to Taiwan, I don't know where Taiwan can buy them.
