South Korea may have lost Canada’s multibillion-dollar submarine order, but analysts say its close-run contest with Germany has handed Seoul a different prize: proof that it can challenge one of the world’s traditional undersea warfare powers on a stage watched closely by defence buyers. Canada chose Germany’s Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) as the preferred bidder for a programme worth about US$40 billion to build up to 12 diesel-electric submarines, along with long-term maintenance and...
Retaining existing customers and a potential resurgence of Russian competition may be among the biggest challenges for sales of Chinese weapons systems, according to a report from an Indian think tank. The study, published this month by the Bengaluru-based Takshashila Institution, questioned whether weapons made in China were “foolproof or in muddy waters” and cautioned against the “reductive assumption that Chinese weaponry is uniformly poor in quality”. Instead, the report’s author Anushka...