By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.
UPDATE: China agrees to return drone WASHINGTON: The same day the US Navy made its case for a much larger fleet of 355 ships, the Chinese navy seized an American underwater drone 50 nautical miles off the Philippines. Just two days earlier, the independent Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative reported China had fortified the artificial islands it has built in disputed waters off the Philippines, emplacing anti-aircraft guns and probably short-range missile defenses as well. If the US Navy needed help convincing Congress to fund a larger fleet, their Chinese counterparts are making a strong case.
[UPDATE: Early Saturday afternoon, the Pentagon said China had agreed to return the Unmanned Underwater Vehicle: “Through direct engagement with Chinese authorities, we have secured an understanding that the Chinese will return the UUV to the United States.” It’s possible the Chinese are feeling remorse, or that the captain who seized the drone acted without orders, but it’s also entirely possible Beijing feels it’s made its point that other nations operate in the South China Sea only on Chinese sufferance. 24 hours is also probably plenty of time for China’s skilled hackers to copy the drone’s software, for use by Chinese drone makers, and download the data it collected, although this was apparently only routine oceanographic data like salinity.]
A particularly unsettling detail about the drone-napping incident is the perpetrators came from the Chinese navy, not the Chinese coast guard. In recent years the two services have played good cop/bad cop, with the white-hulled civilian vessels of the coast guard aggressively approaching foreign vessels while the grey-hulled military vessels of the navy held back, reducing the risk of a dangerous incident between warships. In at least one case, a Chinese naval captain intervened to stop Chinese civilian vessels harassing US Navy ships. But in this incident, a Chinese navy vessel snatched a drone under the nose of its mothership, the unarmed survey ship USNS Bowditch, as the Americans were trying to bring the UUV aboard.
Read the full story at Breaking Defense