A US uncrewed surface vessel (USV) encountered multiple Chinese warships during an autonomous transit of the Taiwan Strait, US defense company Seasats said in a statement on Wednesday.
Seasats announced that a Lightfish USV had completed the first autonomous transit of the Taiwan Strait.
Over five days, the USV traversed the entire length of the Strait while constantly monitoring surface vessel traffic, the company said.
Photo: screen grab from Seasats’ Web site
The Lightfish encountered multiple Chinese warships, one of which was a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Type 056 corvette, it said.
The Chinese vessels were operating “well within Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone without transmitting their identity via the automatic identification system,” it said.
The Lightfish tracked the vessels, and captured images confirming their type and origin, it added.
It was not the USV’s first run-in with a Chinese warship, “but the location and timing [made] this encounter notable,” Seasats chief executive officer Mike Flanigan said in the statement.
“It’s generally understood that the PLAN aggressively projects its vessels into the sovereign waters of smaller neighbors, but the opportunity to capture and share geolocated photographic evidence of it is unique,” Flanigan said.
The transit has proven that long-endurance USVs could help Taiwan monitor and defend its waters, Seasats said, adding that they would deny the PLAN the freedom to move undetected.
“Seasats is actively engaging with Taiwan and allied forces across the Indo-Pacific to deploy and scale persistent maritime domain awareness where it matters,” it added.
Military doctrine has been upended by the rapid proliferation of uncrewed systems, it said.
Ukraine has held Russia at bay partly due to its swift adoption of drone warfare, while Iran has effectively deployed uncrewed systems in the Strait of Hormuz, it said.
“Taiwan is studying those lessons closely and is increasingly prioritizing uncrewed systems as a cornerstone of its defense strategy,” it added.
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