Taiwan plan to develop sea drones branded ‘meaningless’
Mainland media has dismissed Taiwan’s plan to develop its own sea drones as “meaningless”.
The island has high hopes that the new weapons could help it defend itself against attacks from the mainland after Ukraine sunk or damaged several Russian ships using the new technology, and its Project Rapid & Surprising aims to develop uncrewed vessels that can be used to carry out kamikaze attacks on warships.
But a programme by the state broadcaster CCTV dismissed the project as “empty talk on paper” with little practical use on the battlefield.
“Even if Taiwan builds a lot of unmanned ships, it probably wouldn’t have a chance to use them,” Shao Yongling, a military analyst, told the programme.
She said the Taiwanese authorities might have watched Ukraine’s use of nautical drones to sink ships from Russia’s Black Sea fleet and want to copy its “swarming wolf pack” tactics, but argued that the People’s Liberation Army would be able to disable all drone bases in Taiwan before launching any naval operations.
“Most of Taiwan’s military installations, such as weapons depots - including its airports and harbours, would be targeted in the first wave of strikes,” she said.
“Is there any chance that these unmanned boats could be released to attack the vessels of the PLA Navy?”
Another military observer, Wei Dongxu, told CCTV that even if the drones survived, they only had a range of 70km and relied on signal relay stations, which were vulnerable to the PLA’s electronic jamming and interference.
Wei said naval drone boats were fragile and vulnerable to even small and medium-calibre guns, and therefore the PLA’s maritime combat system was “fully capable” of defending against them. “If they were to carry out a surprise attack with these drone boats, they would end up in a trap themselves,” Wei said.
Project Rapid & Surprising was set up last year by the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science & Technology, Taiwan’s government-owned institution for weapon development.
The project completed a prestudy phase late last month and Taiwan’s media said the fact the study took only three months showed the government and the military were well aware of the urgent need to develop naval drones.
The two-year programme has a budget of about NTD$812 million (HK$195 million), and is expected to complete combat evaluations by the end of 2025 and produce at least 200 boats in 2026.
The institute plans to design two models – sized around 10 and 20 metres – using existing remote-controlled target boats used in air force surface target training as a prototype.