Posted on 12/16/2016 9:04:21 AM PST by mandaladon
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Chinese Navy warship has seized an underwater drone deployed by an American oceanographic vessel in international waters in the South China Sea, triggering a formal diplomatic protest
from the United States and a demand for its return, a U.S. defense official told Reuters on Friday.
The incident, the first of its kind in recent memory, took place on Dec. 15 northwest of Subic Bay off the Philippines just as the USNS Bowditch, an oceanographic survey ship, was about to retrieve the unmanned, underwater vehicle (UUV), the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"The UUV was lawfully conducting a military survey in the waters of the South China Sea," the official said.
"It's a sovereign immune vessel, clearly marked in English not to be removed from the water - that it was U.S. property."
The Chinese seizure will add to concerns about China's growing military presence and aggressive posture in the disputed South China Sea, including its militarization of maritime outposts.
A U.S. think tank reported this week that new satellite imagery indicated that China has installed weapons, including anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems, on all seven artificial islands it has built in the South China Sea.
The seized underwater drone was part of an unclassified program to collect oceanographic data, including salinity, temperature and clarity of the water, the official added.
Such data can help inform U.S. military sonar data, since sound is affected by such factors.
The United States issued the formal demarche, as such protests are known, through diplomatic channels and included a demand that China immediately return the underwater drone.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
Can you draw a red line in the ocean?
The seized underwater drone was part of an unclassified program to collect oceanographic data, including salinity, temperature and clarity of the water, the official added.
Right, and I’m Santa Claus.
Would this be considered piracy?
I think sinking the Chinese ship would be fully justified.
You can bet your life that this won’t happen on President Trump’s watch...
Obama-Kerry-Clinton Foundation Technology Transfer.
Just like it was to the Iranians.
They will return it after they reverse engineer it and copy all of the technology.
Barack Hussein has always been the kid who gets sand kicked in his face at the beach, and he’s spending his last five weeks in our White House suffering the same humiliation. I’ll be thrilled to have a real American back in our White House after eight years of weakness.
O.”you stole my eggo!
Pack the next one with an extra 10 lbs of RDX. When the small boat takes it out of the water, detonate it.
Don’t know, isn’t he leaving after his press conference for his vacation in Hawaii?
Yahoo News=fake news. More likely a false flag to disrupt the inauguration.
Probably the same thing that GW Bush did when the Chinese took one of our aircraft and stripped it of sophisticated equipment......nothing.
....The Chinese want a plane full of money (cash)
in order to get back the equipment.... Odungo is good for it, to be delivered on Christmas Day...
Don’t spare the red ribbons Soarky
A parting gift to the chicoms from the nobama regime perhaps.
Consider it a technology transfer in plain sight.
I’m sure that capitan ketchup kerry is writing a very, very, stern letter to his comrades (oops, I mean the PRC) as we speak.
If this happened under President Trump’s watch OTOH, that drone sub would have been equipped with a 10 megaton thermonuclear self destruct mechanism.
Whew, good to know. I mistakenly thought we were spying on China.
Dear Santa,
I want a new car, a new boat, a stocking full of money and the body I had at 18.
Hey obama what are you going to do now?
Nothing is the answer. He and his party would rather cry about an election they lost and find excuses as to why they got smashed.
He will no doubt refrain from making this charge publicly but have his surrogates blame Trump and claim this is a reaction by China to the "offensive" telephone call with Taiwan.
In that he will probably be right but we ought not to believe that we are dealing with the real problem in this tit-for-tat but only the symptoms of an increasingly aggressive and lawless China. We make a phone call, they steal. The left will use this as evidence that Trump is ignorant and clumsy in matters of diplomacy and international relations and therefore a danger in the Oval Office.
We must understand that this sort of irruption is simply the consequence of a situation that has been permitted to get out of control by eight years of Obama's neglect.
Meanwhile, we are entering a very dangerous month until Obama is out of office. He clearly will not have the country behind him to take action, just as he clearly does not have the country behind him to take action against the Russians for their allegedly hacking. Any action he takes will likely only spin out of control and he should refrain from any brinksmanship even at a diplomatic rather than a military level.
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