Taiwan's Black Whale underwater drone, built with British firms, goes into the water for the first time

A nine-metre uncrewed underwater vehicle called Black Whale, developed by Taiwan's Lungteh Shipbuilding with British partners, was lowered into the water for the first time at Su'ao harbour in Yilan County on 11 November, the Liberty Times and PeoPo, a citizen news platform run by Taiwan's Public Television Service, reported.

The reports describe Black Whale as an extra-large uncrewed underwater vehicle with a high degree of autonomous navigation and a modular payload section that can take different equipment for each mission. Its intended roles include underwater intelligence gathering and monitoring, anti-submarine warfare, mine countermeasures and wider undersea combat. The Liberty Times said that if the trials prove successful, the vehicle could become a new tool for Taiwan's asymmetric defence.

PeoPo named the British partners as MSubs and Marine AI, two developers of uncrewed vessels. It said the boat had been expected to be finished from late 2025 and to begin water tests in 2026, and that it serves mainly as a test and demonstration platform for proving key technologies needed for undersea warfare. The Liberty Times likewise said the launch was mainly intended to verify those technologies.

TVBS aired footage of the black hull sliding slowly into the water and described the launch as the vehicle's first public water test. Su Tzu-yun, who heads a strategic resources research division at the government-funded Institute for National Defense and Security Research, told the broadcaster that the payload bay could carry personnel, a range of sensors or even weapons. He also said US Special Operations Command has bought an underwater mini-submarine of the same type.

The launch images used by all three outlets were supplied by Li Chung-wei, a military enthusiast in Yilan, and much of the background in the reports came from his account. None of the reports cited a statement from Lungteh, the navy or the Ministry of National Defense about the test, its results or any procurement plan.

Lungteh first showed Black Whale at the Taipei Aerospace and Defense Technology Exhibition in September 2025. The naval analysis site Covert Shores noted at the time that it closely resembled the MSubs Manta design, but with an X-shaped rudder and a simple propeller arrangement, and gave provisional figures of 9 metres in length, a 2-metre beam and a weight of about 9 tonnes. Defense Update wrote that uncrewed platforms were the centrepiece of that show and listed the Black Whale programme among its key displays.

The vehicle builds on the Yilan yard's earlier uncrewed work. Lungteh has delivered the Kuai Qi and Kuroshio uncrewed surface vessels after testing, and in 2024 it built the Hui Long uncrewed underwater vehicle with the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology, Taiwan's main defence research body. PeoPo reported that Hui Long went through a series of intensive sea trials, including an exercise firing of an SUT heavyweight torpedo, before the project was closed out as planned.

Li argued in the reports that Taiwan should learn from Ukraine's experience with uncrewed vessels, including its reported use of the Sub Sea Baby underwater drone against a Russian Kilo-class submarine at Novorossiysk. He said the armed forces should keep buying conventional warships and submarines but also build dedicated surface and underwater drone units for reconnaissance, defence and strike, given the frequent grey-zone pressure from Chinese warships, coast guard vessels and maritime militia boats around Taiwan.