A fisherman in Indonesia, known only as Saeruddin, recently brought a very different type of transport, capturing what appears to be a Chinese underwater drone. In the past two years, at least two other very similar, if not identical, unmanned underwater glider vehicles have been found in Indonesian waters. This raises questions about whether the Chinese government is discreetly conducting underwater surveys of routes between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, information that could be especially useful for its submarines transiting these areas while they are submerged.
Saeruddin allegedly captured the drone on December 20, 2020, near the Selayar Islands, an archipelago that is part of the southern Sulawesi province of Indonesia, in the central part of the expanding nation, which consists of more than 17,000 individual islands. He later handed it over to the local police, who handed it over to the Indonesian military.
via Twitter
A glider-type unmanned underwater vehicle recovered off the coast of Indonesia’s Selayar Islands in December 2020.
An outlet report from Indonesia detikNews said the drone, which had what appeared to be some kind of sensor array on its nose, was just under 2.1 meters long, not to mention what appeared to be a long antenna or sensor extending from the rear end. Images of the unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) show that it has a torpedo-shaped body with a pair of wings mounted towards the center and a vertical tail.
Twitter User @Jatosint was one of the first to notice the strong similarities with the Sea Wing UUV, a project developed and produced by the Shenyang Automation Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and which has been in use since at least 2014. An underwater Drone type ocean glider, Sea Wing moves forward in the water, aided by its wings and tail, diving repeatedly and then returning to the surface. It performs these maneuvers using an internal system, essentially a balloon that expands and contracts as the pressurized oil moves in and out, which alters its buoyancy.
China has made questionable claims in the past that Sea Wing drones were able to stay in the sea for more than 30 days and dive nearly four miles below the surface.
CAS publicly uses Sea Wings for oceanographic research with sensors capable of measuring things like the strength and direction of currents and water temperature, oxygen levels and salinity. These are common tasks for these types of UUVs, which are in use around the world, including by military forces.
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Sea Wing unmanned underwater vehicles positioned in front of a Chinese Academy of Sciences research ship.
In December 2019, the Chinese research ship Xiangyanghong 06 launched 12 such UUVs in the eastern Indian Ocean. CAS said the drone group ended up traveling more than 12,000 kilometers, or 7,500 miles, collectively. Chinese authorities have not reported the disappearance of any of the drones, but it is important to note that initial reports said that 14 of the drones, instead of 12, were deployed. At the same time, it is not clear whether the prevailing currents would be able to carry a deactivated sea wing to the waters of the Selayar islands.
This is not the first time that an apparent Sea Wing drone has been found in Indonesian waters. In January, one was recovered near the Masalembu Islands, some 400 miles west of the Selayar Islands. In March 2019, another was found in the waters around the Riau Islands, further northwest. These three groups of islands are located in bodies of water that form important parts of several sea routes that stretch between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.
Google Maps
A map showing the location, from left to right, of the Riau Islands, the Masalembu Islands and the Selayar Islands, where apparent Chinese underwater drones have been recovered in the past two years.
Although we do not know the exact configurations of the UUVs that were found in the waters around Indonesia, underwater glider-type drones are also used regularly to conduct hydrographic surveys and assist in creating underwater maps. This type of information is useful for creating accurate sea charts to support naval operations, as well as commercial shipping and civil shipping activities. Having detailed maps of the contours of the seabed is particularly valuable for the crews of submarines sailing underwater by the waves.
As the Navy of the People’s Liberation Army of China (PLAN) works to project power further and further from the country’s coasts, having updated sea maps for various critical waterways will be increasingly important for day-to-day activities. -day and any future actual combat operations. The South China Sea is already a hotly contested body of water, with virtually every country in the region vying for Beijing’s expansive territorial claims.
In 2017, there was also a report that the Chinese government was testing how glider-type UUVs, possibly versions of Sea Wing, could act as communication and relay nodes to help quickly transmit information that can be useful for detecting and tracking foreign submarine movements in the South China Sea. That same year, news emerged of Chinese plans to establish a network of underwater sensors in that region, ostensibly for environmental research, which could also have applications in anti-submarine warfare.
via SCMP
A brochure photo showing personnel from the Oceanology Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, or IOCAS, manipulating what appears to be a Sea Wing UUV, which accompanied a 2017 story about the use of underwater glider-type drones to support anti war operations -submarine.
While we cannot say with certainty what any of these UUVs have done in Indonesian waters, the suspicions about the potential for dual civil and military activities are also not surprising. In fact, a People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLANO) Dalang III The class rescue and rescue ship snatched a United States Navy glider that was conducting oceanographic research in the waters of the South China Sea in 2016, certainly in part to try to see if it was actually collecting more substantial intelligence information.
Being able to examine the glider and its payloads could have provided some level of useful information for China’s own intelligence weapons. The Indonesian military is most likely choosing the drones that the country’s fishermen continue to retrieve, seeking to gather any useful details about their capabilities and activities.
As Chinese naval activity across the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean continues to grow, it seems equally likely that this type of discovery will become more and more common. In 2018, a Vietnamese fisherman recovered what appeared to be a Chinese torpedo, possibly leftover from a drill of some kind, a discovery that also underscored PLAN’s growing presence in the South China Sea region. In 2015, Chinese authorities themselves announced that a fisherman had recovered what they said was a torpedo-shaped underwater intelligence “robot” off the coast of Hainan Island in the South China Sea, which houses an important PLAN base.
One must imagine, if not something else, that Indonesian fishermen are increasingly looking for more unusual catches in waters across the country.
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