Part of the Selayar Islands in the province of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. A local fisherman found a “rocket-like” glider off the island of Selayar in December 2020.
Javed Hazara | iStock | Getty Images
SINGAPORE – An underwater surveillance drone recovered deep inside Indonesian sovereign waters last month was found to be of Chinese origin, according to defense analysis company Janes.
The “rocket-like” object with wings was identified as an autonomous underwater glider built by China Haiyi or “sea wing,” Kelvin Wong, chief analyst of unmanned systems Janes, said in a note on Sunday.
A local fisherman found the glider on the island of Selayar in Indonesia’s South Sulawesi province before handing it over to the Indonesian navy. This is the third identical underwater glider found in Indonesian waters in two years, Wong said.
It is not known where and why the drone was originally launched, but the location where it was found is “disconnected from international waterways and far removed from China’s adjacent maritime claims,” the analyst said.
There has been no known Chinese scientific investigation in or around Indonesian waters that used these gliders in 2020, Wong said. The underwater drones used in the last known operation in December 2019 are said to have been successfully recovered, he said.
Military use
Underwater gliders are commonly 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.
Such 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,” Wong said.
“Instead, intimate knowledge of these underwater features can help personnel (anti-submarine warfare) hunt potentially hostile submarines.”
China has a “clearly mandated military-civilian merger policy” to use the knowledge and technology available in civilian and commercial space for military advantage, Wong explained. As a result, the “dual-use nature” of the information collected by underwater gliders “will likely be exploited by the Chinese military,” he said.
Wong pointed out that the latest underwater gliders found by Indonesians were near strategic waterways and bottlenecks. This implies that the data collected can be used by China to increase the ability of submarines and surface fighters to operate in those waters, the analyst said.