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Pentagon: Chinese Ship Captures US Underwater Drone Fom Sea (usatoday.com)
The Pentagon is demanding that China return an "unlawfully seized" underwater drone after a Chinese warship took the device from waters near a US oceanographic vessel. From a report on USA Today: A U.S. Navy underwater drone operating in international waters was captured by a Chinese warship in the South China Sea, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said in a statement on Friday. The drone is not armed and is used for gathering weather and temperature data. The incident occurred Thursday. The drone was launched by the USNS Bowditch, a civilian crewed oceanographic ship that is operated by the Military Sealift Command, off the coast of the Philippines. These types of drones, called gliders, typically collect unclassified data, such as water temperatures and salinity levels. "We call upon China to return our UUV immediately, and to comply with all of its obligations under international law," Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said in a statement, using the abbreviation for "unmanned underwater vehicle."
If you kids don't remember the Glomar Explorer,
it's about time you googled it.
Those Chinese ain't stupid.
Of course China will return it.
Right after they take it apart, photograph its parts, map all its PCB traces, identify all the parts, copy its firmware and reassemble it (that last part is optional).
And in a year at most the US can buy a comparable version at half the cost from China.
Same thing happened when that US spy plane had to make an emergency landing awhile back (after colliding with a Chinese fighter jet). China returned the plane, in crates. I hear the crew threw all the sensitive stuff out while the plane was over the water.
That's what winners do.
They grab what they want.
By the pussy.
Has anyone looked at the really poor numbers of China? Way down, big trouble, dead! Xi Jinping, no leadership, will be out! Sad.
I find it difficult to imagine any scenario that makes China the "world's greatest power."
Then you have the imagination of a turnip. You literally cannot imagine a scenario in which the nation with the largest population in the world and a GDP on track to surpassing the USA in around 10 years could become the world's greatest power? I'm not saying any of this is certain, or even likely, but not even being able to imagine the possibility is dumbfounding.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
It has the largest population, the largest military and the largest industry. It's busy making strategic investments around the world and territorial claims. It's investing huge sums on science and engineering to make up for any technological lag.
I wouldn't like to bet against China being the dominant world power by the end of the century, whether I like it or not. Mostly not.
Thus, from the Chinese point of view, the drone was likely a) spying on their military bases being built on one of the islands they are expanding and b) doing so from within waters they claim as their own.
From the US point of view, a) they were operating in what is still internationally recognized as either international waters or waters controlled by their Philippine allies. and b) getting the closest possible look at the military installations a major power was building, which are responsible for a major change in the balance of tensions in the region. (One can easily argue that these efforts by the Chinese government are deliberately provocative)
As a final note; I do not believe for one moment that the drone deployed by the US navy only gathers such non-classified data the article mentions. Drones are primarily intelligence gathering platforms after all, not science research vessels. If I were developing, deploying and operating multi-million dollar drones in an area currently under a great deal of military and economic tensions, I'd be loading that drone with every type of sensor, (active and passive) that I could possibly fit in its hull. Given the current tensions, I'd be using only its passive sensors to be sure. I wouldn't want my drone getting caught. The best intelligence, after all, is the intelligence the opponent doesn't even know you have. But I'd be certainly doing more than measuring temperatures and salinity. My primary interest would probably be using passive sonar to *thoroughly* map the sea bottom and gps/ inertial tracking to chart how the Chinese construction was affecting the local currents and thermocline depths. Should hostilities ever break out, such detailed knowledge of the area would make finding and combating submarines much easier as well as giving my own subs the tools they need to maximise their own efforts at hiding.
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
The South China Sea is, contrary to what you might expect from the name, not chinese territory except for small parts. It is mostly international waters.
There are, sadly, many people in the US that cannot see the US as anything other than the world's greatest country, in everything, and that it will continue to be the greatest until the end of time. It's a fantasy that they can't see past and refuse to even try. The US has not been the leader in many categories for some time and we're the leader is some categories that we really don't want to be, such as highest percentage of population in prison. These people are not only sad, they're dangerous to the continued survival of the country as we can't fix problems that we refuse to see or acknowledge.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
Good thing the Pentagon has an unblemished record of never claiming anything to not have military purpose that wasn't a lie. That record of honesty will give their word a lot of weight when they are in the right like this.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
The map in the article suggests it was confiscated just off the coast of the Philippines in Subic Bay - the Chinese were way outside their territorial waters on this one.
Actually, attacking a capturing US equipment in international waters changes the whole evaluation of the likelihood of a hot war. We simply can't tolerate this behavior. They have to give it back, apologize, and stop trying to claim new areas of the Pacific to avoid war. And that isn't going to happen. The only question at this point is, are we going to stick to a cold war? One of the reasons that the historical Cold War stayed cold was that both sides realized that certain actions required a response, and both sides quietly didn't do those things. China seems unaware of how that works.
That would be better as a Haiku.
That's what winners do
They grab whatever they want
Grab by the pussy
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
In America, we call those, "gamers".
You are welcome on my lawn.
This is what a slow motion train wreck looks like.
The Chinese will want the United States and Trump to lose face because of what Trump said about Taiwan. Because Obama is still in power, Trump will make fun of him for being a weakling in his response to China, whatever it is. Then, once Trump becomes President, he will have to respond in a way that escalates the problem, to differentiate himself from the "weak" Obama. China will do more of these types of actions to make Trump lose face. Trump will continue to escalate the crisis by tweeting insults to China, because Trump will rather start a war than lose face. Add to this the fact that the Chinese government needs to distract its population from its own failures and corruption, and what is better to do that than a potential war with the United States? This is a perfect storm of stupid, needless crisis, and it will end very badly.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.