Part of the Selayar Islands in the southern Indonesian province of Sulawesi. A local fisherman reportedly found a “missile-like” glider on Selayar Island in December 2020.
Javed Hazara | iStock | Getty Images
SINGAPORE – An underwater surveillance drone recovered in the depths of Indonesia’s sovereign waters last month was found to be of Chinese origin, according to defense analysis company Janes.
The “missile-like” object with wings was identified as the Chinese autonomous underwater glider Haiyi or “sea wing,” said Kelvin Wong, Janes’ chief unmanned systems analyst, in a Sunday note.
A local fisherman reportedly found the glider on Selayar Island, in the southern Sulawesi province of Indonesia, before handing it over to the Indonesian navy. This is the third identical underwater glider found in Indonesian waters in two years, said Wong.
It is not known where and why the drone was originally deployed, but the location where it was found is “disconnected from international waterways and extremely remote from China’s adjacent maritime claims,” said the analyst.
There is no known Chinese scientific research in or around Indonesian waters that used these gliders in 2020, Wong noted. Underwater drones used in the last known operation in December 2019 have all been successfully recovered, he said.
Military use
Underwater gliders are typically used to conduct scientific research on the underwater environment, such as collecting data on chlorophyll and oxygen levels, as well as water temperature, the analyst said.
This data is also useful for naval operations, especially in submarine and anti-submarine warfare, he added.
“Superior knowledge of a region’s waters can allow submarines to operate more quietly and reduce the likelihood of discovery,” said Wong.
“On the other hand, an intimate knowledge of these underwater characteristics can assist personnel (anti-submarine warfare) in hunting potentially hostile submarines.”
China has a “clearly mandatory civil-military fusion policy” to use the knowledge and technologies available in the civil and commercial space to gain military advantages, Wong explained. As a result, the “dual use nature” of information collected by underwater gliders “is likely to be exploited by the Chinese military, he said.
Wong pointed out that the last underwater gliders found by Indonesia were close to strategic waterways and bottlenecks. This implies that the data collected can be used by China to increase the capacity of its submarines and surface fighters to operate in these waters, the analyst said.