The capability of Asia’s submarine fleet is currently increasing, even if the total number of hulls ‘will taper off within a few years’. This was the message delivered by Collin Koh, research fellow at the Maritime Security Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore, during the ADECS 2019 conference.
Koh pointed out the fallacy of merely counting submarine hulls. If that method were useful, North Korea would be construed as having the largest submarine fleet in the world. This is because Pyongyang operates a massive fleet of coastal inshore minisubs that can be used for