Germany Still Dominates the Convential Submarine Market
The Second German Diesel
A Wisconsin factory made the Junkers architecture American and won the Pacific War. Eighty years later, a Friedrichshafen factory still decides which navies can buy diesel submarines—and which cannot. The diesel engine remains the unforgiving arbiter of conventional undersea power.
—— BLUF ——
The dominant conventional submarine export platform of the past fifty-five years is the German Type 209, a diesel-electric attack submarine designed for export by Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft and Ingenieurkontor Lübeck, commissioned in 1971 and still being built. Sixty-eight Type 209s have been delivered to fifteen navies across Latin America, the Mediterranean, the Gulf, South Asia, and East Asia, with additional Type 214 and 218SG variants extending the line. Every one is powered by MTU diesels from Friedrichshafen.1
In 2022–2025 the Royal Thai Navy's attempted acquisition of a Chinese Yuan-class S26T submarine became the unambiguous test case for the market's structural dependency on German engines. The original contract specified three MTU 396 diesel generator sets. Germany denied the export license. China offered an indigenous substitute—the CHD620, itself derived from a licensed MTU design—and for three years Bangkok refused it. In August 2025, after 6,000 hours of bench-testing and substantial concessions, the Thai Cabinet accepted the substitution. No other customer outside China and Pakistan has accepted a Chinese-engined submarine from CSOC. The core of the conventional submarine export market is, in engineering terms, a German diesel cartel.2
Modern AIP-equipped diesel-electrics are, in their tactical envelope, acoustically quieter than nuclear submarines. The 2005 JTFEX exercise in which HSwMS Götland (Sweden's Stirling-AIP boat) repeatedly “sank” USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) is the public-domain demonstration.3 The implication for U.S. force planning—in an era in which every nuclear hull competes for the same two shipyards and the same restricted budget—is uncomfortable and increasingly debated in these pages.
The companion piece to this article described how a 1932 German patent, licensed to a Wisconsin scale-maker, became the 38D8⅛ that powered the U.S. Pacific submarine campaign. This article describes what happened when the Americans left the conventional submarine market and the Germans did not. The story has the same moral as the first one, arranged in a different order. The diesel engine is still the thing.
I · The Export PlatformThe Type 209 and What It Did to the Market
When the United States Navy decommissioned its last diesel-electric submarine in the 1990s and committed entirely to nuclear propulsion, the conventional submarine market did not vanish. It migrated. The navies of the developing world—facing aging World War II-era American GUPPY conversions, aging British Oberons, aging French Daphnés—needed replacements they could afford, maintain, and operate with small crews. What arrived to meet them was a German design that had never served a day in the Bundesmarine.
Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft (HDW) of Kiel and Ingenieurkontor Lübeck (IKL), the submarine design bureau founded by Ulrich Gabler, responded to an early 1967 Hellenic Navy requirement with a single-hull, 1,100-ton diesel-electric boat derived from the Bundesmarine's Type 206 but enlarged for blue-water patrols and fitted with export-specific electronics.4 HDW delivered four Type 209/1100s (the Glavkos class) to Greece between 1971 and 1972. That contract was the seed of what would become, by any reasonable measure, the most successful non-nuclear submarine program in history.1
The design matured across five variants—the 1100, 1200, 1300, 1400, and 1500—the numbers approximating surfaced displacement in tons. Hulls grew by up to fifty percent to accommodate longer range, tropical air-conditioning, better sonar, and (in later boats) increased diving depth. The propulsion plant remained architecturally constant: four MTU diesels (typically four MTU 12V493 units, later updated), four AEG alternators, a single shaft driving a five- or seven-bladed propeller, four 120-cell battery groups occupying approximately one-quarter of the boat's displacement.1 In the 1500 variant, 132-cell batteries raised installed shaft horsepower to approximately 6,100 shp. Submerged speed in short sprints exceeded 22 knots on every variant. Test depth was 500 meters.5
Sixty-eight Type 209s were commissioned between 1971 and 2021 across fifteen navies, with additional hulls built under license in Brazilian, Indian, South Korean, and Turkish yards.1 Turkey is the largest operator (fourteen boats—six Type 209/1200 Atılay, four Type 209/1400 Preveze, four Type 209/1400 Gür, with six follow-on Type 214-based Reis-class boats now in progress).6 South Korea has nine Type 209s as Chang Bogo-class, and has re-exported the design: Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering built three Type 209/1400-derived Nagapasa-class boats for Indonesia, commissioned 2017-2021—the same DSME that will later feature prominently in Pakistan's Hangor-class saga.1
Type 209 Operators (15 Navies, 68 Hulls)
Iran placed an order for six Type 209s in 1978 that Ayatollah Khomeini cancelled after the 1979 Revolution. The Bundesmarine has never operated a Type 209; it was designed for export from day one.
II · The Acoustic RealityWhy Diesel-Electric Is Not the Poor Relation
For a generation of American naval officers trained to regard conventional submarines as a budget compromise, the operational record of modern AIP boats is disconcerting. In June 2005, during JTFEX off the southern California coast, the Swedish Kockums-built HSwMS Götland—a 1,500-ton, Stirling AIP-equipped diesel-electric boat then on loan to the U.S. Navy for ASW training—repeatedly penetrated the USS Ronald Reagan carrier strike group's defensive screen and delivered multiple simulated torpedo kills against the carrier and her escorts.3 The exercise results led directly to a two-year U.S. lease of the boat and to a fundamental reassessment of littoral ASW doctrine.
The acoustic physics of this outcome are straightforward and worth stating precisely because they contradict a widely held civilian assumption. A nuclear submarine's primary powerplant cannot be turned off. Even at a dead stop, reactor coolant pumps must circulate pressurized water through the primary loop; the main condenser must condense steam; auxiliary seawater pumps must dissipate heat overboard. Those pumps are acoustically detectable at frequencies that propagate well in saltwater.7 The boat also rejects roughly 150 MW of thermal waste into the ocean continuously, producing a wake signature detectable in the infrared and by subtle thermocline perturbation.
An AIP-equipped diesel-electric boat, running submerged on its Stirling engines or fuel cells, or purely on batteries, has no such continuous machinery signature. The hull moves at two to four knots; there are no reduction gears turning; the propeller is rotating slowly enough to defeat blade-rate analysis. A former submarine commander and Bundesmarine officer, Vice Admiral Andreas Krause, described non-nuclear submarines as “vehicles of position”—assets that are not pursuing anything, but whose entire tactical value lies in not being found.8
In October 2025, Proceedings itself carried Lieutenant Commander Jordan A. Spector's argument that the U.S. submarine force should acquire diesel-electric AIP boats directly as a fleet supplement: four conventional hulls could be procured for the cost of one Virginia-class SSN, without loading additional work onto Groton or Newport News, and without competing against the Columbia SSBN program for reactor-qualified labor.9 The editorial history of that argument in this journal runs at least back to a comparable piece in June 2018.10 Neither has yet moved the Pentagon. The reasons are organizational more than technical—Rickover's institutional descendants in Naval Reactors remain opposed to any diesel procurement that could undercut the SSN pipeline—but the technical argument has never been stronger than it is in 2026.
III · The Friedrichshafen LeverMTU and the Export Control Regime
If the Type 209 proved that German naval architecture dominates the conventional submarine export market, MTU Friedrichshafen—today MTU Friedrichshafen GmbH, a business unit of Rolls-Royce Power Systems AG—proved that German engines dominate the propulsion segment. The MTU Series 396 (in its naval 16V396 SE84 form) and its successor Series 4000 have powered essentially every Type 209, Type 212A, Type 214, and Type 218SG ever built. They have also powered a very large number of non-German submarines whose procurement paths are more interesting.11
The regulatory frame that matters is the European Union arms embargo imposed on the People's Republic of China on 27 June 1989, in response to the Tiananmen Square massacre, and still formally in force.12 The embargo's application in practice has been inconsistent. France has sold China hundreds of Dauphin helicopter airframes that became the Harbin Z-9. Germany, through MTU and its predecessors, sold engines to Chinese shipyards under dual-use licenses for decades—engines that investigative reporting subsequently documented in PLA Navy Type 052 destroyers and, most sensitively, in Type 039 (Song) and Type 039A/B (Yuan) class diesel-electric submarines.13 The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's arms-transfer database records these transactions explicitly.14
During the 1990s and 2000s, MTU licensed production of its Series 396 engine to Henan Diesel Engine Industry Co., Ltd., a Chinese state-owned enterprise in the CSIC complex.15 The Chinese license-built variant is designated CHD620 (and in submarine form, CHD620V16H6). The licensing arrangement was framed at the time as commercial and industrial—railroad locomotives, power generation, large trucks—but the underlying architecture is the MTU 396. The Thai Admiral Adung Phaniam confirmed this publicly in November 2023: the CHD620 is “essentially a licensed Chinese version of the MTU 396 engine… China obtained a license from Germany's MTU to manufacture the engine, assigning it the designation CHD620.”15
The quiet part of the story is that Germany permitted those licenses when it did not have to, and for commercial reasons that looked perfectly reasonable to the federal export-control apparatus (BAFA) at the time. The loud part is what happened when the licensed engines began to reappear on the export market as Chinese submarine propulsion.
IV · The Thailand CaseWhat the Royal Thai Navy Discovered
On 5 May 2017, Thailand's military-led government signed a government-to-government contract with China Shipbuilding & Offshore International Co. (CSOC) for a single Yuan-class S26T submarine at 13.5 billion baht (approximately US$390–408 million at contemporary exchange rates). The procurement had originally been planned for three hulls; fiscal constraints reduced it to one.16 Construction began at Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group in Wuhan, with keel laid on 5 September 2019. Delivery was planned for 2023.17
The contract specified, by name and by model number, three MTU 396 series diesel generator sets from Germany. The Thai Navy had insisted on this. The MTU 396 is the engine the Royal Thai Navy's submariners had trained to expect on any serious SSK; it is the engine operated successfully by half the world's conventional submarine force. The specification was a quality gate, not a design preference.16
In late 2021, CSOC approached MTU to arrange the engine transfer and discovered that Germany would not issue the export license. The reason given—confirmed in early 2022 by Philipp Doert, German Federal Military Attaché to Thailand, to the Bangkok Post—was that the export was to a Chinese military-industrial entity, which triggered the 1989 EU embargo.18 Doert noted pointedly that “China did not ask/coordinate with Germany before signing the Thai-China contract, offering German MTU engines as part of their product.”18 Rolls-Royce Power Systems, MTU's parent, confirmed through spokesman Christoph Ringwald that MTU had supplied engines to Chinese shipyards historically but declined to state why this particular transaction had been refused.19
CSOC proposed substituting the Chinese CHD620V16H6 engine. The Royal Thai Navy refused. For three years the boat sat in frames at Wuhan, approximately half complete, while Bangkok waited to see whether Germany would relent (it did not) or whether CSOC could convince some other supplier to sell an engine for a Chinese-integrated propulsion system (none did). A Pheu Thai opposition lawmaker, Yutthapong Charasathian, made the stalemate public in early 2022, and the project became a domestic political embarrassment for the Prayut Chan-o-cha government.20
In November 2023 Thai Navy Commander-in-Chief Admiral Adung Phaniam confirmed publicly that the CHD620 was a licensed derivative of the MTU 396, that China had offered to substitute it, and that the Thai Navy was studying the offer.15 CSOC subjected the CHD620V16H6 to more than 6,000 hours of bench testing to meet Thai qualification criteria. On 5 August 2025 the Thai Cabinet—by then a Pheu Thai-led government under Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra—approved a contract modification accepting the Chinese engine. Delivery is now projected for 2027, with sea trials in Thai waters expected to continue through that year.21 Bangkok has additionally asked the Pakistan Navy for an informal performance assessment of the CHD620, as Pakistan's eight Hangor-class submarines (license-built from the same Yuan-class baseline) use the same engine.22
The important operational point—made plainly in the August 2025 Defense News reporting—is that the CHD620V16H6 has never been installed in an operational PLA Navy submarine. If China had confidence in the engine, it would be in Chinese boats. The fact that the engine required a special Thai qualification program suggests strongly that China's own Type 039A/B Yuan-class submarines still run MTU 396s delivered under the dual-use arrangement that Germany has now effectively closed.21 The CHD620 is, in engineering terms, an export-grade workaround.
V · Pakistan and the Parallel MarketHangor-Class as Counterexample
The Hangor-class (Type 039B derivative) submarine program provides the only other current production example of a Chinese-engined export submarine. Pakistan signed the Hangor contract with CSOC in April 2015 for eight boats—four to be built at Wuchang Shipbuilding in Wuhan, four at Karachi Shipyard & Engineering Works under technology transfer.22 The first hull, PNS Hangor (S147), was launched at Wuhan on 26 April 2024; the fourth Wuhan-built boat is expected to deliver around 2025–2026, with Karachi-built boats following through the late 2020s. All eight Pakistani hulls use CHD620V16H6 engines.22
Pakistan's willingness to accept Chinese engines is not a market signal; it is a diplomatic one. Pakistan's relationship with China has, since the 1960s, been structured to accept Chinese defense technology regardless of Western qualification standards—JF-17 fighter, Al-Khalid tank, Type 054A/P frigates—on the understanding that the alternative is technology access that Islamabad either cannot afford or cannot politically accept from other sources. The Hangor is the submarine instance of that same pattern.22
What Pakistan does not demonstrate is a functioning Chinese export submarine market on its merits. No navy outside the PLAN and the Pakistan Navy currently operates a Chinese-built submarine. Thailand, after eight years, has reluctantly accepted one. Bangladesh has declined twice. Indonesia, when offered CSSC's upgraded S26T variant in 2024 with the explicit promise that MTU engines could somehow be included (a claim the Indonesian Ministry of Defense reportedly received with skepticism), has not signed.23 Iran has not been permitted, by Chinese arms-export policy, to buy.
The plain fact that emerges from these transactions is that the diesel engine—not the hull, not the combat system, not the torpedo, not the AIP module—is the artifact of the market. A customer willing to buy a Chinese hull but not a Chinese diesel must be refused. A customer willing to accept both can be sold to. This reduces the addressable export market for CSOC submarines, as of 2026, to approximately two states. For the Type 209 / 212 / 214 / 218SG family, backed by MTU, the addressable market is approximately twenty-five states. The asymmetry is almost entirely engine-driven.
VI · Parallels with 1938Why the Historical Rhyme Matters
Readers of the companion article on the Fairbanks-Morse opposed-piston diesel will notice a pattern. In the 1930s an American firm licensed a German submarine-suitable diesel architecture from a German engine house, rebuilt it to American tolerances, and used it to supply the wartime U.S. submarine force. The transaction was commercial in form and transformational in effect. It worked because Germany in 1932–1934 was not yet under the export controls that would later constrain it, and because Fairbanks-Morse had the industrial and engineering capacity to absorb the architecture and make it its own.
In the 1990s and 2000s a Chinese state enterprise licensed a German submarine-suitable diesel architecture from a German engine house, rebuilt it to Chinese tolerances, and used it to supply the PLA Navy's conventional submarine force. The transaction was commercial in form. Its effect has been the subject of considerable reassessment in Berlin. China did not quite manage to absorb the architecture well enough to field it confidently in export applications; Fairbanks-Morse did. The difference is instructive and is substantially about industrial rigor, metallurgy, fuel-injection tolerances, and service-life validation—all the things that made the 38D8⅛ a 40-plus-year-service engine in American nuclear hulls and that have kept the MTU 396 a 30-plus-year-service engine in Type 209s operated by navies from Santiago to Seoul.
There is a third parallel worth naming. In 1938 the United States chose not to be a sole-source customer for submarine diesels; General Motors Cleveland, Fairbanks-Morse, and (briefly, disastrously) Hooven-Owens-Rentschler competed. The dual-source strategy saved the wartime submarine program when HOR failed. In 2026 the United States has no diesel submarine-engine industry at all, because the United States has no diesel submarine program at all. Fairbanks Morse Defense continues to build the opposed-piston engine, but as an EDG for nuclear hulls, not as a main-propulsion engine for any operational U.S. SSK. The only Western firms building submarine main-propulsion diesels at volume are MTU Friedrichshafen, Pielstick (now a Rolls-Royce Power Systems brand), and MAN Energy Solutions. All three are German or German-Franco-German. The U.S. Navy has, by a process of slow procurement decisions taken one at a time, ceded this supply chain entirely.
VII · What It Means for the PacificThe Strategic Ledger
The strategic implications follow directly from the industrial facts.
First, the PRC cannot match Germany's export submarine market and will not be able to match it until Chinese submarine diesels accumulate two to three decades of successful service in PLA Navy hulls under operational conditions comparable to those experienced by MTU 396-powered Type 209s. That is not an argument about geopolitics; it is an argument about Mean Time Between Failures and the reputational accumulation that comes from a supplier's engines not breaking in the hands of third-country navies over twenty-year service lives. Germany has that. China does not, yet.
Second, the U.S. Navy's absence from the SSK market hands an unambiguous soft-power tool to Germany and, at the margin, to France (Naval Group's Scorpene), Japan (Mitsubishi-Kawasaki's Sōryū/Taigei), and South Korea (Hanwha's KSS-III derivative). These four countries together control essentially the entire serious conventional submarine export market. The U.S. role in it consists of occasional AIP component contributions and the AUKUS Virginia-class transfer to Australia, which is not a conventional-submarine transaction in any operational sense.
Third, the German veto over Chinese submarine exports—exercised quietly through MTU export-license policy—is a model of the kind of supply-chain leverage that U.S. officials routinely wish they had over Chinese military-industrial exports. Berlin has demonstrated how to use it: maintain decades of commercial cooperation, build irreplaceable dependence on a high-specification component, and then refuse the export license at the moment when refusal is most strategically useful. The 2021–2025 Thai case study is the textbook.
Fourth, and most importantly for American readers, the acoustic reality of modern AIP boats is the reason all of this matters. The South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, the First Island Chain, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Mediterranean, the Baltic—these are the operational environments where diesel-electric AIP boats are not merely adequate but optimal. They are shallow, constrained, acoustically complex, and full of merchant traffic that masks tactical signatures. A 2,000-ton Type 214 or Type 212CD in 100 meters of water in the Taiwan Strait, on batteries, is genuinely very hard to find. A 7,800-ton Virginia-class SSN in the same environment is constrained by draft alone. The asymmetry is, again, not geopolitical but hydrological.
VIII · Proceedings AssessmentFour Observations
The conventional submarine, as a weapons system, is defined by its diesel engine to a degree that is not widely appreciated outside the industry. A Type 209 with MTU engines is a salable export product. The same hull with non-MTU engines is, in the judgment of a great majority of the world's navies, not. This was true in 1938 when the U.S. Navy accepted Fairbanks-Morse and Cleveland Diesel but not HOR. It is true in 2026 when the Royal Thai Navy accepted, only under duress and after six thousand hours of bench-testing, the CHD620.
The German export control regime is the operational brake on Chinese submarine proliferation. It is not the U.S. Arms Export Control Act; it is not the EU embargo as a legal instrument; it is the BAFA licensing decisions applied to MTU naval diesels case by case. Those decisions are made in Eschborn, not Washington, and they are the single most important non-U.S. tool currently constraining PLA Navy submarine exports. American strategic planners should be more conscious of this than they appear to be in open-source commentary.
The U.S. Navy's exit from the conventional submarine market was a peacetime industrial decision whose strategic consequences are now fully manifest. Rickover's institutional descendants won the bureaucratic argument for four decades. The argument may not continue to win. Proceedings has published versions of the countercase in 2018 and 2025. The October 2025 Spector article, arguing for a mixed fleet of AIP boats and SSNs on cost-and-yard-capacity grounds, is a signal that the argument is becoming harder to dismiss as the Davidson Window approaches.
Finally, the acoustic advantage of AIP boats over nuclear boats in littoral conditions is not a debating point. It is a demonstrated operational fact, most publicly in the 2005 Götland JTFEX results but also in the ongoing Baltic and East Mediterranean operational reporting of the German and Swedish submarine forces. The U.S. Navy's continued insistence on an all-SSN submarine force is tolerable only if the littoral mission set is either ignored (which it is not, operationally) or handled by allies (which, in the Pacific, means Japan, South Korea, and Australia—the first two using Japanese and Korean diesels with German licenses and components, the third waiting for U.S. SSNs under AUKUS that will not arrive in numbers for a decade).
The inheritance from Dessau is still earning compound interest in Friedrichshafen. The inheritance from Beloit is still running in the emergency diesel-generator rooms of Ohio-class boomers. Both inheritances began as German patents. Neither was an American invention. Both were bought by American industry at moments when German engineers were available and German firms needed export customers. The Navy got a good deal both times.
The question this journal has been asking in various forms for the better part of a decade is whether the United States intends to let the next inheritance—AIP submarines fit for the Pacific littorals—pass to allies without U.S. industrial participation. The answer, as of April 2026, is unclear. The Thai case demonstrates what it looks like when a navy loses control of its supply chain. The U.S. Submarine Force is not yet there. It is closer than it should be.
This is the second of two Proceedings-style articles on the role of German diesel architecture in shaping the modern submarine force. The first, “The Iron Heart of the Silent Service,” treats the 1938 Fairbanks-Morse Model 38D8⅛ and the Pacific War submarine campaign.
Verified Sources & Citations
Trade press reporting, government attaché statements, parliamentary disclosures, and SIPRI arms-transfer records supporting the foregoing account.
-
“Type 209 submarine,” Wikipedia, updated April 2026. Principal technical source: Anthony Watts, Jane's Underwater Warfare Systems 2003-2004 (Jane's Information Group, 2002); and HDW / ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems corporate documentation.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_209_submarine -
Gordon Arthur, “After dillydallying, Thailand proceeds with Chinese-built submarine,” Defense News, 20 August 2025. Incorporates commentary from Siemon Wezeman, SIPRI, and Jon Grevatt, Janes.
defensenews.com/naval/2025/08/20/after-dillydallying-thailand-proceeds-with-chinese-built-submarine/ -
Brent M. Eastwood, “An AIP Submarine Quieter Than Ambient Ocean Noise 'Sunk' A U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier,” 19FortyFive, 11 January 2026. JTFEX 2005 reporting.
19fortyfive.com/2026/01/an-aip-submarine-quieter-than-ambient-ocean-noise-sunk-a-u-s-navy-aircraft-carrier/ -
“Type 209,” GlobalSecurity.org technical overview, including HDW General Contractor Principle background.
globalsecurity.org/military/world/europe/type-209.htm -
“Type 209 (class) Diesel-Electric Attack Submarine,” MilitaryFactory.com, technical specifications page.
militaryfactory.com/ships/detail.php?ship_id=Type-209 -
“Type 209 submarine,” Grokipedia, updated January
2026; includes detailed operator rosters and current modernization
status for Turkish Ay-, Preveze-, and Gür-class boats.
grokipedia.com/page/Type_209_submarine -
“Why are diesel-electric submarines quieter than nuclear submarines?” Naval Post technical analysis (2021), covering reactor coolant pump acoustics, shaft rate tones, and hull-radiated noise.
navalpost.com/nuclear-submarines-diesel-electric-submarines-noise-level/ -
Hans J. Ohff, “Nuclear versus diesel-electric: the case for conventional submarines for the RAN,” The Strategist (Australian Strategic Policy Institute), 11 July 2017; incorporating VAdm. Andreas Krause's “vehicles of position” formulation.
aspistrategist.org.au/nuclear-versus-diesel-electric-case-conventional-submarines-ran/ -
Lt. Cdr. Jordan A. Spector, USN, “The Path to a Bigger Submarine Fleet Includes Diesels,” Proceedings 151/10/1,472 (U.S. Naval Institute, October 2025).
usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2025/october/path-bigger-submarine-fleet-includes-diesels -
“There's a Case for Diesels,” Proceedings 144/6/1,384 (U.S. Naval Institute, June 2018).
usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2018/june/theres-case-diesels -
“Germany Submarine Capabilities,” Nuclear Threat Initiative country profile, with coverage of HDW / TKMS export fleet and MTU propulsion standardization.
nti.org/analysis/articles/german-submarine-capabilities/ - European Council Declaration on China, 27 June 1989 (Madrid European Council), establishing the EU arms embargo on the PRC. Text reproduced in multiple secondary sources; see Defense News citation (Source 2 above) for authoritative restatement.
-
“Subsurface Ambition: Thailand's Yuan-Class S26T and the Geopolitical Logic of Silent Power,”
Geopolitics.asia, 6 August 2025. Documents the dual-use licensing
history of MTU 396 exports to China and their reappearance on Type
039A/B submarines and Type 052 destroyers.
geopolitics.asia/post/subsurface-ambition-thailand-s-yuan-class-s26t-and-the-geopolitical-logic-of-silent-power -
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Arms
Transfers Database, accessed 2025–2026; records of MTU diesel engine
transfers to Chinese shipyards 1990–2015.
armstrade.sipri.org/armstrade/page/trade_register.php -
“Chinese Submarine Engine is a Licensed-produced German Powerplant: Thai Navy Chief,”
DefenseMirror, 27 November 2023. Reports Adm. Adung Phaniam's 117th RTN
anniversary address confirming the CHD620-MTU396 lineage.
defensemirror.com/news/35501/Chinese_Submarine_Engine_is_a_Licensed_produced_German_Powerplant -
“Thailand's Chinese submarine order hits snag after Germany's export embargo on MTU engines,” South China Morning Post,
10 March 2022. First-round reporting of the CSOC-RTN engine-export
impasse, including disclosures by Pheu Thai MP Yutthapong Charasathian.
scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3169959/thailands-chinese-submarine-order-hits-snag -
Dzirhan Mahadzir, “German Embassy Says About MTU Engines of S26T Submarines to Royal Thai Navy,”
MilitaryLeak.com, 24 February 2022. Reports Philipp Doert (German
Federal Military Attaché to Thailand) confirmation of export-license
denial.
militaryleak.com/2022/02/24/german-embassy-says-about-mtu-engines-of-s26t-submarines-to-thailand/ - Full Doert statement published in Bangkok Post (behind paywall); summarized in VOA News reporting (Source 19 below).
-
Zsombor Peter, “Thai-China Submarine Deal Runs Aground on EU Arms Embargo,”
Voice of America, 31 March 2022. Includes MTU spokesman Christoph
Ringwald's on-record statement on export-control compliance and Jon
Grevatt's commentary on engine-integration incompatibility.
voanews.com/a/thai-china-submarine-deal-runs-aground-on-eu-arms-embargo-/6509026.html -
“Navy insists on German engines as stated in submarine contract with China,” The Nation Thailand, 3 March 2022. Domestic Thai political reaction to the MTU refusal.
nationthailand.com/in-focus/40012997 -
“Thailand Moves Forward with Acquisition of Chinese-Built Submarine,” DEFCROS News, 20 August 2025; with Defense News reporting (Source 2) on the 5 August 2025 Cabinet decision.
news.defcros.com/thailand-moves-forward-with-acquisition/ -
Ritesh Kumar Singh, “China Pushes 'Rejected' Submarine Down Thailand's Throat,”
EurAsian Times, 21 May 2024. Covers Pakistan Hangor-class program,
CHD620V16H6 engine commonality, and Thai consultation with Pakistan Navy
on engine performance.
eurasiantimes.com/china-pushes-rejected-submarine-down-thailands/ -
Boyko Nikolov, “China promises Indonesia 'German' MTU engine in its submarine,”
BulgarianMilitary.com, 4 July 2024. Reports CSSC pitch to Indonesian
MoD offering to procure MTU engines for an Indonesian S26T variant—a
claim not yet tested against German export policy.
bulgarianmilitary.com/2024/07/04/china-promises-indonesia-german-mtu-engine-in-its-submarine/ - Supplementary references: Peter Suciu, “Type 209: The Most Powerful Submarine You've Never Heard Of,” National Interest, 25 November 2024 (nationalinterest.org); Rolls-Royce Power Systems (MTU Friedrichshafen) corporate disclosures on naval engine product lines; HDW / ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems AG annual reports; U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings and Naval History back issues on conventional submarine operations 2005–2025.
COMPANION PIECE TO “THE IRON HEART OF THE SILENT SERVICE” · APRIL 2026
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