Chinese steal U.S. underwater drone from right under the nose of the Yanks.

[Cujo]

Cheeky fucking chinks.

Chinese warship seizes US underwater drone in international waters
Official says drone deployed by American oceanographic vessel in South China Sea was taken by Chinese navy on Thursday

The Chinese navy has seized an underwater drone in plain sight of the American sailors who had deployed it in international waters, in a seemingly brazen message to the incoming Trump administration.

According to a US defence official, the unmanned glider had come to the surface of the water in the South China Sea and was about to be retrieved by the USNS Bowditch, an oceanographic and surveillance ship, when a Chinese naval vessel that had been shadowing the Bowditch put a small boat in the water.

Chinese sailors in the small boat came alongside the drone and grabbed it despite the radioed protests from the Bowditch that it was US property in international waters. The incident happened about 100 miles north-west of the Philippines’ port of Subic Bay.

The US has issued a formal protest and demanded the return of the glider.

Peter Cook, the Pentagon press secretary, said the Bowditch made radio contact with the Chinese ship and asked for the glider to be returned. “The radio contact was acknowledged by the [Chinese] navy ship, but the request was ignored,” Cook said.


“The UUV [unmanned underwater vehicle] is a sovereign immune vessel of the United States. We call upon China to return our UUV immediately, and to comply with all of its obligations under international law.”

The aggressive Chinese gesture comes at a time of rising tensions between China and the US in the South China Sea, where Beijing has claimed ownership of a number of reefs and small islands – which it is in the process of militarising – while the US navy has been conducting patrols nearby to assert freedom of navigation in the sea lanes.

The tension has spiked since Donald Trump was elected in November. The US president-elect quickly broke a 37-year protocol by taking a call from the president of Taiwan, and openly questioned Washington’s longstanding “one China” policy that does not recognise Taiwan as a separate state. Beijing has signalled it would respond dramatically if Trump implements a break in policy once he takes office on 20 January. In recent days, China has conducted bomber patrols close to Taiwan in a flexing of its military muscle.


The seizure of the drone is also a reflection of the struggle occurring under the surface of the South China Sea. As China develops a strategic submarine fleet, with the potential to carry nuclear missiles out into the Pacific Ocean, the US has built up a monitoring network designed to spot Chinese submarines as they leave their bases. Drones are key to the network, and there is a race under way between major naval powers to develop drones that can work together in swarms and “see” long distances through the water. Underwater gliders are drones that can stay underwater on the lookout for submarines for long periods of time.


“This looks like signalling from the Chinese in response to Trump’s Taiwan call,” said Bonnie Glaser, the director of the China Power Project at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. “It is hard to believe this is the action of an independent commander. The Chinese now have much better control over the military, particularly the navy. It is in China’s interest to send signals before Trump is inaugurated, so that he gets the message and be more restrained once he is office.”

Sebastian Brixey-Williams of the British American Security Information Council said: “Nuclear states are increasing anxious about unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs, or underwater drones) autonomously tracking their nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), making them vulnerable to antisubmarine warfare. This is an issue for China in particular, whose SSBN fleet is small and noisy. Though the USNS Bowditch is an oceanographic ship and may sound harmless, the kinds of data it is collecting will make Chinese submarines easier to find over time.

“China therefore accomplishes a number of things by seizing a US underwater drone,” Brixey-Williams said. “It allows Chinese scientists to better understand the US’s offensive technical capabilities in this area, and potentially allows them to reverse-engineer them, bringing gains in both the commercial and military spheres.”

Glaser pointed out that the Chinese have frequently tested the US when there is a new administration. In the early months of the George W Bush administration, in 2001, the Bowditch was involved in a close encounter with a Chinese frigate which turned on its gun control radar and forced it to retreat. A week later there was a collision between a US spy plane and Chinese warplane off China’s Hainan island.

At about the same point in the early Obama administration, in March 2009, a number of Chinese navy ships harassed another US oceanographic vessel, the USNS Impeccable, coming as close as 50ft away, trying to snag its acoustic equipment with hooks, waving flags and demanding the Impeccable leave the area.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...outh-china-sea

[forreachingme]

The thing may be just sinked and now China is so evil, they stole US toy...

Mercans want Phils to take position, Du30 to come out with some Grande speech soon, or not...

US alerts PH after China seized its underwater drone off Subic

[lom]

“China therefore accomplishes a number of things by seizing a US underwater drone,” Brixey-Williams said. “It allows Chinese scientists to better understand the US’s offensive technical capabilities in this area, and potentially allows them to reverse-engineer them, bringing gains in both the commercial and military spheres.”

They'll go for $139.90 on AliExpress next year.

[cyrille]

'A sovereign vessel'

[Neverna]

Or else what?

[harrybarracuda]

I thought they had self destruct mechanisms in these things?

Would have been quite fun to blow up a boatful of thieving chinkies.

"Ooooh sorry, they must have pressed the wrong button, Over", etc.

[VocalNeal]

USNS Bowditch away team should have been a bit quicker off the mark. They were caught sleeping at the switch.

[bsnub]

An unarmed ship with a civilian crew using a drone with commercially available parts. Big loss.

[Neverna]

Another way to look at it is that a US Navy ship carrying out a military survey had some of its property taken away by the Chinese navy.

"The UUV was lawfully conducting a military survey in the waters of the South China Sea," a U.S. official said

.

[sabang]

Nice bit of reverse engineering and soon enough they will have their own undersea drones. Much cheaper too.

American sailors who had deployed it in international waters

Not according to China.

[forreachingme]

I turn on TV randomly few mins this days, rarely watch, but over CNN it's only about The Russian Hack and the stolen toy, Mercans cry baby propaganda at levels never seen be4...
Needs money to pay all this OFFICIAL well paid idiots telling that crap, huge loss of credibility and funds.
AlYaSeeRat is a much better choice of sadness on screen

[Dragonfly]

The thing may be just sinked and now China is so evil, they stole US toy...

Mercans want Phils to take position, Du30 to come out with some Grande speech soon, or not...

US alerts PH after China seized its underwater drone off Subic

surely an act of war

how many wars have Americans lost so far ?

[HermantheGerman]

An unarmed ship with a civilian crew using a drone with commercially available parts. Big loss.

That's what you get for "OUTSOURCING" the U.S. Navy

The new U.S. Commander in Chief is also a sort of "OUTSOURCED" President

[SKkin]

Or else what?

uhhh...ok we give up.

[Topper]

how many wars have Americans lost so far ?

How many have the Belgians won?

[david44]

Lokks like Americans were on a fishing expedition , Chinese ate their tackle, does not bode well, US has until around 2050 to Nuke China into the stone age o accept that no world powr lasts for ever.I hope it does'nt come to fruition Hai Nan Dao is barely hours from Isaan and a nuclear even one sided war will devastate.

I think Trump'll try and get the Russians if not onsode but neutral in next 8 years so President Trump Jumior the antichrist can finish the job

[SKkin]

^ Is Damien's Rottie just off screen in that shot?

[SKkin]

in plain sight of the American sailors

[terry57]

Once the Jigaboo is escorted out the Back Door and The Donald takes his rightly office the slope heads will give it back.

They like The Donald and have never liked the Jiggers.

[wasabi]

During the Cold War the Americans requested the Royal Navy to cut and tow an anti submarine cable from a Russian fishing trawler sailing inside Russian home waters.
The British sub did indeed cut the cable and towed it back and gave it over to the US Navy.
Hypocrites, you've did it first.

[Hugh Cow]

^^
" Man don't you dig we're the good guys!" (Mod Squad... Clarence Williams 111)

[JayZee]

During the Cold War the Americans requested the Royal Navy to cut and tow an anti submarine cable from a Russian fishing trawler sailing inside Russian home waters.

an anti submarine cable = towed sonar array
Russian fishing trawler = ELINT gatherer. Used to see a lot of them - always had rather more than the usual number of aerials on them.
inside Russian home waters = naughty. Wouldn't have dreamed of going there ....

[CaptainNemo]

“China therefore accomplishes a number of things by seizing a US underwater drone,” Brixey-Williams said. “It allows Chinese scientists to better understand the US’s offensive technical capabilities in this area, and potentially allows them to reverse-engineer them, bringing gains in both the commercial and military spheres.”

They'll go for $139.90 on AliExpress next year.

This is such a non-story. It seems to be abut building a fake narrative about robot wars between the US and China... preceded by stories where the word "drone" was used to describe miniature flying machines the Chinese are supposedly using to monitor the occupied islands. I am no Sinophile, and I do not support their actions, but I think this is propaganda.
What kind of power source are people imagining even a flying drone can use? This is conflating RC toys with expensive military tech. It's crap lazy clickbait journalism from professional trolls.

The thing they picked up was a Kongsberg Seaglider.

Sea Platforms
Armed Chinese ship seizes US Seaglider in South China Sea

David Carl, Ottawa - IHS Jane's Defence Weekly
16 December 2016



China's People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) seized an autonomous unmanned vehicle (AUV) belonging to the US Navy (USN) approximately 50 n miles northwest of Subic Bay, the Pentagon announced on 16 December. USNS Bowditch , a Pathfinder-class survey ship, was recovering a Kongsberg-built 'Seaglider' when the AUV was taken by a PLAN naval vessel.
The Chinese ship, a DALANG-III-class (Type 992-III) support ship (pennant number 510) launched a small boat that retrieved the AUV. PLAN vessels of this class are armed with either two twin-mounted 2M-3 (Type 61) 25 mm/80 and 14.5 mm/90 naval guns. USNS Bowditch is unarmed.
The Seaglider is an unclassified commercial glider used for gathering oceanographic data on water conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD), oxygen concentration, and chlorophyll fluorescence data.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:<something>:www.janes.com/article/66347/armed-chinese-ship-seizes-us-seaglider-in-south-china-sea

http://www.janes.com/article/66347/a...outh-china-sea

I have laughed out loud when I've heard newscasters call this a "robotic submarine" or an AUV/UUV or a "drone".

These things are about 3 foot long, and have no propeller or directional control. They move (incredibly slowly) by adjusting the internal ballast. When they do float up to the surface (which is determined by a simple programme written in C inside a very lightweight linux box) they can be communicated with by Iridium (expensive) or Wifi (fingers crossed), and you can grab the data off them and load a new programme onto it if you want. They tend to accumulate green gunk - bifouling, which can affect their buoyancy and make them to tend to go down more than up.
They are regularly increasingly deployed all over the world for oceanography purposes - but we are only just now starting to integrate interesting sensors in them... but nothing out of the world of James Bond... simple sensors that only last as long as the sensing resources and battery allow... if you get more than a month out of them, you're doing very well.

They are not much more advanced than a profiling float, of which there are very many across the world's oceans (this map is a couple of years out of date):


If you look at the Champa Sea (South China Sea) area, you'll see three things:
1. There's a gap around the archipelago region - this is mainly because it's a bit too shallow
2. There are a number of dark green US deployments in the Champa Sea
3. There are number of light green Chinese deployments around the Phillipines, next to the US ones.

The point being that the Chinese know what it is, people from their Oceanography places on Hainan, the ShangHai area, and in Shandong visit western institutions. They are throwing money at this field and copying as much as they can. However, a lot of the equipment that works well is commercial, and part of large TNCs portfolios, and they want to find ways of selling it more to O&G companies for environmental monitoring; or military for target practice - because they are not that reliable for sci-fi movie type activities, compared to a human with a vehicle or bit of gadgetry, and the batteries are a major constraint.

[quote=Dragonfly;3421284]

The thing may be just sinked and now China is so evil, they stole US toy...

Mercans want Phils to take position, Du30 to come out with some Grande speech soon, or not...

US alerts PH after China seized its underwater drone off Subic

Again, this is journalists trying to ramp up a situation. You can see that Chinese science ships have already been all around the Phils deploying floats... presumably the story will break how these floats are connected to a space satellite... tin hats at the ready... it's all true... except how many of these people have read and understood the spec docs for the hardware and software?
Next week, will it be Chinese government funding meth gangs in the Phils? The Chinese government's conduct is a problem, but you can't argue for them being supremely dangerous and incompetent both at the same time - it doesn't stack up. They have a lot of money, and a lot of nationalism, and a lot of worry about keeping their population economically placated and subdued.
Similar to the USA, I suppose, just on a larger scale...

[bsnub]

The point being that the Chinese know what it is

They did this to test Drumpfs response and they got their answer;

[Dragonfly]

fucking great answer he got, that's how it should be played

what a great leader he is going to make,

Vive le Trump