Agreement ends brief standoff, as China shows resistance to U.S. maritime surveillance in region
U.S. Naval Ship Bowditch, shown in 2002, was conducting survey work along the sea floor in the South China Sea using at least two of the underwater drones about 50 nautical miles northwest of Subic Bay in the Philippines. Photo: Reuters
The Pentagon and China’s Defense Ministry said an American underwater survey drone that a Chinese naval vessel seized in the South China Sea would be returned to the U.S., ending a brief standoff that comes as China shows resistance to U.S. maritime surveillance in the region.
Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said on Saturday that the U.S. had “secured an understanding” that China would return the underwater survey drone, after engaging directly with Chinese authorities. He didn’t say when or how the device, which a Chinese vessel seized on Thursday, would be returned.
His announcement came hours after the Chinese Defense Ministry said its navy rescue ship had retrieved the “unknown device” because it posed a safety risk to ships and sailors. China said its authorities would return the drone, having identified it, but accused the U.S. of being unhelpful by going public with the incident on Friday.
“The U.S. side’s unilateral public hyping is inappropriate and not conducive to a resolution of the issue,” the Chinese Defense Ministry said.
President-elect Donald Trump criticized the seizure on Saturday, days after provoking Beijing’s ire by suggesting his administration may abrogate a decadeslong agreement on the status of Taiwan if Beijing doesn’t make concessions to U.S. interests.
“China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters—rips it out of water and takes it to China in unprecedented act,” Mr. Trump wrote in a Twitter message. His original tweet on the subject on Saturday called the seizure an “unpresidented act,” but a replacement message corrected the spelling error.
Later Saturday, he wrote another Twitter message saying: “We should tell China that we don’t want the drone they stole back.- let them keep it!”
China’s seizure of an American underwater drone in the South China Sea marks an escalation of Beijing’s efforts to block U.S. naval surveillance and likely reflects rising concern about the U.S. tracking Chinese submarines.
The Pentagon said the drone was gathering oceanographic data near the Philippines when the Chinese navy captured it in international waters. Though the Pentagon described it as an unclassified operation, defense experts said the U.S. often uses data from such drones to track foreign submarines and navigate U.S. subs.
“These drones appear to be most directly relevant to anti-submarine warfare,” said M. Taylor Fravel, a maritime security expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They could help the U.S. Navy “to fine-tune sonar readings and thus track Chinese subs,” he said, though it is difficult to interpret this incident without knowing what other vessels were in the area.
China has rapidly expanded its undersea fleet in recent years, causing the U.S. to intensify its tracking efforts and Beijing to search for ways to evade detection. Chinese attack submarines have ranged far into the Indian and Pacific oceans, according to U.S. officials. They expect that Beijing will soon begin patrols by submarines bearing nuclear missiles, most likely in the South China Sea.
The Pentagon said the drone was captured about 50 nautical miles northwest of Subic Bay in the Philippines, site of a former U.S. naval base that is still visited regularly by U.S. Navy vessels.
That location, analysts said, suggests the interception is a rare, possibly unprecedented, instance of China directly impeding U.S. naval surveillance in international waters, outside the “nine-dash line” on maps by which Beijing delineates its claim to almost all the South China Sea.
Donald J. Trump
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We should tell China that we don't want the drone they stole back.- let them keep it!
Experts said the incident could be an attempt to widen a wedge between the U.S. and the Philippines, a U.S. ally, or to test the resolve of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump after he suggested he would challenge China on trade and territorial issues. Beijing could also be trying to exploit inertia in Washington in the waning days of the Obama administration.The drone, captured while the U.S. Naval Ship Bowditch was trying to retrieve it, was a “glider” which moves slowly through the water for weeks or months gathering data on the sea’s depth, salinity and currents, according to the Pentagon.
Such data is vital for submariners who need to avoid obstacles on the seabed while using the water’s currents, salinity and temperature to evade detection through sonar signals. In the last few years, the U.S. has developed and deployed gliders and other undersea drones carrying acoustic sensors that listen for submarines.
One U.S. official said the captured vessel was a Littoral Battlespace Sensing glider or similar underwater drone.
The LBS glider was developed for the U.S. Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, which provides communications and information warfare systems for the Navy, and was designed for deployment on all Navy oceanographic survey ships like the Bowditch, the command has said.
A statement on the Navy’s website last year said those ships had been equipped with LBS gliders and other underwater drones, which together aid “with executing anti-submarine warfare, mine warfare and special warfare operations.”
“China is interested in gaining data on egress routes” for its submarines from the South China Sea, said Euan Graham, director of the International Security Program at the Lowy Institute in Sydney. The captured drone “could have some intelligence value for the data it holds.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-china-in-talks-to-handle-seizure-of-drone-in-south-china-sea-officials-say-1481979853
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