The US on Friday demanded the return of an underwater survey drone the Pentagon said was snatched by a Chinese navy vessel shadowing a US Navy oceanographic survey ship in the South China Sea.
“It’s ours, it was clearly marked, we want it back, and we don’t want this to happen again,” said Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman.
It was the first time the government in Beijing has seized a piece of U.S. military gear since the Chinese took a Navy surveillance plane on Hainan Island following a midair collision in April 2001. Unlike that incident, however, the underwater drone was on an unclassified mission and isn’t considered a particularly valuable intelligence asset.
The drone, known as an “ocean glider” and valued at approximately $150,000, is one of many the US Navy uses around the world to collect bathymetric data from the sea, along with data on the water’s salinity, temperature and current flow, the Pentagon said. Bright yellow and about 10 feet long, the drones often move slowly and autonomously around the sea to collect data about the ocean floor and environment for weeks or months before U.S. Navy ships retrieve them.
The State Department lodged a formal diplomatic protest over Thursday’s incident and said it was addressing the issue through diplomatic channels.
A representative of the Chinese Embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. There was no mention of the incident on the website of the Chinese Defense Ministry, and calls to an after-hour duty office phone there weren’t answered.
The seizure of the drone marks the latest and perhaps sharpest point of tension between U.S. and Chinese military forces in and around the South China Sea, a critical trade waterway where China has built artificial islands and laid claim to a vast swath of maritime territory, to the dismay of neighbours and U.S. officials.
A Washington-based think tank reported on Thursday that over the last several months, the Chinese have installed anti-aircraft weapons and other small arms on all seven of its reclaimed islands in the South China Sea. China’s reclamation and militarisation of the islands have raised concerns in Washington that Beijing is planning to enforce broad and disputed Chinese claims to the sea, a critical maritime hub that sees more than $5 trillion in trade transit its waters annually.
Thursday’s incident added to those worries. The U.S. Naval Ship Bowditch, which has a civilian commander, was retrieving two of the underwater drones about 50 nautical miles northwest of Subic Bay in the Philippines. It was being shadowed by a Chinese ship, a Dalang 3, a typical occurrence when US ships navigate through those waters, according to Navy and defence officials.
The USNS Bowditch retrieved the first drone, but while preparing to retrieve the second one, the shadowing Chinese ship placed a smaller boat in the water and snatched away the second yellow drown, according to US defence officials. The US ship established “bridge-to-bridge” communications with the Chinese vessel, about 500 yards away, the Pentagon said, and asked the Chinese ship to leave the drone in the water. That request wasn’t heeded.
The drone, which uses GPS technology to navigate, wasn’t easily rerouted away from the Chinese ship, Capt. Davis said. The last communication from the Chinese ship as it departed the area with the drone was: “We are returning to normal operations,” he said.
Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook described the ocean-glider drone as “a sovereign immune vessel of the United States” and said China had acted unlawfully in seizing it.
The incident comes days after President-elect Donald J. Trump prompted a backlash from China when he questioned whether the US should continue to observe a bedrock agreement over Taiwan’s status that has kept the peace in the area for decades. China considers Taiwan a breakaway province, and Washington’s decision to rescind diplomatic recognition of Taiwan’s government and adopt a One China policy led in 1979 to the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with China.
Mr. Trump’s assertion that the US should only maintain its One China policy if China makes concessions to American interests came after he accepted a phone call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen on December 2, breaking decades of diplomatic protocol.
It wasn’t immediately clear if the drone seizure amounted to a geopolitical signal from Beijing to Mr. Trump or lower-level, provocative behaviour by Chinese sailors.
China often views what the US describes as routine military measures in international waters with suspicion, considering activities like oceanographic surveying as spy work.
The Chinese government has previously accused the U.S. of overdramatising the situation in the South China Sea as a pretext to build up defences of the U.S. and its allies in the region.
The US has denied those accusations, arguing earlier this year that China has heightened tension in the region by reclaiming more than 3,200 acres of land in parts of the South China Sea over the previous two years and using “coercive tactics short of armed conflict” to assert power in the region.
The US regularly sends ships and surveillance aircraft through the South China Sea on what the Pentagon describes as “freedom-of-navigation operations,” designed to signal that the waters should remain open to all.
At times, those operations have led to tension with the Chinese military, which regularly intercepts U.S. planes and ships, sometimes in a way the Pentagon has deemed unsafe or unprofessional.
But Chinese seizure this week of US equipment marks an escalation the U.S. military so far hasn’t seen amid heightened tensions in the area.
Jason Miller, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, declined to comment on whether the incident may have been linked to the President-elect’s comments about Taiwan.
The Wall St Journal
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/wall-street-journal/tensions-rise-as-china-snatches-us-navy-underwater-drone/news-story/07cc5e477b11b7d800c70935d7ee367c
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