The Chinese military has returned the U.S. Navy “ocean glider” unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) that it snatched from international waters in the South China Sea the week of Dec. Dec. 12, the Pentagon announced Dec. 20.
The USS Mustin (DDG-89), an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, collected the UUV from People’s Liberation Army-Navy vessel 510 on Dec. 19 northwest of the Philippines, near where China “unlawfully seized” the drone four days earlier, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said in a statement. navy_logo
According to U.S. defense officials, the USNS Bowditch (T-AGS 62), an oceanographic research ship, was trying to recover the UUV on Dec. 15 when a Chinese ship launched a small boat and retrieved it. The Chinese ship ignored a request to give it back, prompting the Pentagon to demand its return. The UUV is used to gather military oceanographic data such as ocean temperature, salinity and depth information.
“The U.S. will continue to investigate the events surrounding this incident and address any additional findings with the Chinese, as part of our ongoing diplomatic dialogues and the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement Mechanism,” Cook said. “The U.S. remains committed to upholding the accepted principles and norms of international law and freedom of navigation and overflight and will continue to fly, sail and operate in the South China Sea wherever international law allows, in the same way that we operate everywhere else around the world.”
Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet, the Navy’s oceanographer and commander of Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command, said the UUV was built by Teledyne Technologies [TDY] Teledyne Webb Research and is part of a fleet of about 130 Littoral Battlespace Sensing-Gliders (LBS-G) that the Navy began operating in 2012. The LBS-G is based on Teledyne’s Slocum Glider, a torpedo-shaped, two-meter-long UUV that uses buoyancy changes and its wings and tail-fin steering to move through the water.
Information collected by the Navy gliders is sent to the Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVOCEANO) and fed into the office’s ocean models. NAVOCEANO pilots the gliders from NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.
Gallaudet wrote on a Navy blog that “only 5 percent of the world’s oceans have been explored” and that “these underwater robots allow us to explore more of the ocean, and faster, at a fraction of the cost of a manned submersible or a ship. The information gathered allows us to better predict ocean currents, density, sea states and tides which the U.S. Navy needs to safely and effectively operate all around the world.”
The admiral said he plans to expand the use of ocean gliders and accelerate the development and deployment of newer systems.