Part of Selayar Islands in South Sulawesi Province of Indonesia. A local fisherman reportedly found a “rocket-like” glider off Selayar Island in December 2020.
Javed Hazara | iStock | Getty Images
SINGAPORE – An underwater surveillance drone found deep in Indonesian sovereign waters last month appears to be of Chinese origin, according to defense analysis firm Janes.
The winged “missile-like” object has been identified as the China-built autonomous underwater plane Haiyi or “sea wing,” Kelvin Wong, Janes’ chief unmanned systems analyst, said in a note on Sunday.
A local fisherman reportedly found the glider off Selayar Island in Indonesia’s South Sulawesi province before it was handed over to the Indonesian Navy. That’s the third identical underwater kite found in Indonesian waters within two years, Wong said.
It is unknown where or why the drone was originally deployed, but the location where it was found is “disconnected from international waterways and extremely distant from China’s adjacent maritime claims,” the analyst said.
There haven’t been any Chinese scientific studies in or around Indonesian waters that used these gliders in 2020, Wong noted. Underwater drones used in the last known operation in December 2019 would all have been successfully recovered, he said.
Military use
Underwater gliders are most often 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 enable submarines to operate more quietly and reduce the likelihood of discovery,” said Wong.
“Conversely, a thorough understanding of these underwater properties can aid personnel in hunting down potentially hostile submarines.”
China has a “clearly mandated military-civilian fusion policy” to use the knowledge and technologies available in the civilian and commercial space for military benefits, Wong explained. As a result, the “dual-use nature” of the information gathered by submersible gliders “will likely be exploited by the Chinese military, he said.
Wong pointed out that the latest underwater gliders found by Indonesians were located near strategic waterways and bottlenecks. It implies that the data collected could be used by China to increase the ability of its submarines and surface combatants to operate in those waters, the analyst said.