Taipei, May 22 (CNA) No progress has been made by Taiwan in seeking cooperation from the United States to jointly build submarines, but there are other options for partners to build such vessels, the local shipbuilder commissioned to plan and design the submarines said Monday.
It has been reported that Raytheon Co., a major U.S. defense contractor and industrial corporation with weapons and military and commercial electronics as its core manufacturing areas, will partner with CSBC Corp., Taiwan, the contractor for Taiwan's indigenous submarines, to build submarines.
However, CSBC said there has been no progress toward any partnership between it and the U.S. It declined to divulge which company it will partner with.
The shipbuilder said that after it won a design contract for the first of a new class of domestic diesel-electric submarines last year, it began to devise relevant plans, including starting talks with the U.S. on possible cooperation.
However, the planned cooperation with the U.S. was shelved shortly before then-U.S. President Barack Obama stepped down in December 2016. The U.S. government said at the time that all arms sale deals and technical cooperation projects would be left to Obama's successor for final decisions, according to CSBC.
After President Donald Trump took office in January, he put the projects on hold and no progress has been made to date, it said.
CSBC has many other alternatives to a U.S. partnership and will push ahead with its indigenous shipbuilding project, according to the company.
