Source: Privy Council No. 10
Jiangsu Province held a commendation meeting on the 17th to reward 16 people who salvaged and handed over suspicious underwater theft devices. According to the report, since 2020, Jiangsu fishermen have found 10 suspicious devices made in other countries, with special functions such as underwater investigation, identification, and theft of secrets, posing a threat to national security. In the current public reports, it is not directly pointed out what type or type of equipment the underwater theft devices fished by Jiangsu fishermen are. So what could these devices be? What ulterior motives are these devices placed in my coastal waters by other countries?
It is reported that 11 of the 16 commended personnel are fishermen and 5 are related personnel, who salvage and actively hand over suspicious underwater theft devices in the process of daily operations in the territorial waters of the mainland.
According to Jiangsu News, this is not the first time that Jiangsu has commended and rewarded fishermen who salvaged and handed over suspicious underwater theft devices, and since 2016, Jiangsu Province has held four such commendation and reward conferences.
CCTV also disclosed on the eve of the National National Security Education Day that a fisherman and crew in Yancheng, Jiangsu Province, caught a huge black object while fishing in the coastal waters, and then reported it to the local fishery administration and national security departments, and handed over the caught device to a national research institute. In addition to Jiangsu Province, Zhejiang, Guangxi, Hainan and other places have fishermen caught technical monitoring devices from abroad, and there are different models, varieties and advanced functions.
At that time, Chinese hydroacoustic engineering experts judged that the device salvaged by the fishermen was a wave glider, and it was judged that it was a secret device secretly dropped by overseas countries in China's waters.
In the public information reporting the special commendation and reward meeting of Jiangsu Province on the 17th, there is no direct mention of what type or type of underwater device was salvaged by our fishermen. According to the previous research and judgment of Chinese hydroacoustic engineering experts, it is likely that the fishermen salvaged them would also include suspicious devices such as wave gliders.
Before explaining how the Wave Glider works, you should first look at what it looks like.
A company in the United States "ocean wave glider"
After reviewing the data, Lao Liu found that the wave glider is an unmanned offshore observation platform that can continuously and effectively observe the marine environment under different sea conditions. The earliest development and design of wave glider is the American company Liquid Robotics, in 2009 developed the world's first - Red Flash, the wave glider using a two-body design of the wave propulsion unmanned surface boat, by the surface and underwater two parts, the water surface has a surface floating platform, the underwater "glider" part through the cable tied to a few meters below the platform. The float and glider work together, and the "hydrofoil" on the underwater glider rotates up and down with the action of the waves, thereby converting the wave energy on the surface of the ocean into the power of the water platform. Because waves can exist on the ocean surface for a long time, they can fundamentally solve the problem of energy demand for conventional offshore observation platforms.
How the Wave Glider works.
In 2012, Liquid Robots announced that after more than a year of sailing, the wave glider they developed traveled from San Francisco, USA, to Queensland, Australia, during which time it sailed a total of about 16,668 kilometers, setting a world record for the longest underwater robot route.
From this point of view, in theory, if a similar device is placed in the waters around the mainland of other countries, it can basically engage in unmanned underwater operations for a long time.
Whose home could these foreign devices be? At present, there is no direct naming in official reports. However, a bold analysis is likely to be inextricably linked to the United States. After all, a few years ago, there were reports that a U.S. Navy submarine was captured by the Chinese in the South China Sea. At that time, some analysts believed that the protagonist of this incident was likely to be the LBS-G underwater glider of the US Navy. Some Taiwanese media believe that the "Slorkum Glide" unmanned underwater vehicle was captured at that time.
No matter what type of underwater device it is, what kind of information is it trying to steal when it is deployed on the coast of the mainland?
In general, unmanned underwater vehicles such as underwater gliders are equipped with relevant measurement sensors to collect environmental information such as ocean thermohaline profiles of the relevant sea areas according to pre-set routes. A number of underwater gliding mechanisms are formed into a network fleet to achieve continuous time and space three-dimensional environmental parameters acquisition. With anchor buoys, submarines, drifting buoys and other network observations, an autonomous marine sampling network can be established. It can provide data support for marine environmental protection and scientific research, and can also directly support combat tasks such as submarine warfare, mine warfare and anti-submarine warfare.
On the official website of Liquid Robotics in the United States, anti-submarine warfare is first mentioned in the introduction of the use of the wave glider. During a Royal Navy unmanned exercise, Liquid Robotics and its parent company, Boeing, used a network of underwater unmanned equipment to detect, report and track a submarine.
In addition to tracking and detecting underwater forces, the system can also be used to detect surface ships. As a low-cost mobile platform that can perform 24×7 continuous acoustic monitoring, vessels entering or operating in target areas could be targets for the system.
Another function is as an intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance platform. As a low-observability mobile platform, the Wave Glider can be monitored beyond visual range through underwater and surface payloads.
Theoretically, wave gliders can be loaded with sensors such as hydrophones and synthetic aperture sonar, deployed in key target areas, and used to listen for enemy submarines, surface ships, underwater weapons and other noise signals. It can perform tasks in water bodies for a long time, and once the relevant information is detected, the relevant information of the target can be obtained through satellite system reports.
In addition to reconnaissance and monitoring of surface and underwater equipment in other countries, another potential use is to monitor the hydrometeorological conditions in the sensitive waters around china for a long time. In particular, not long ago, after the US "Seawolf" class attack nuclear submarine crashed into the submarine mountains in the South China Sea, the need for similar nautical chart mapping correction work has become more prominent.
For example, the current, which can directly affect the underwater positioning of submarine navigation, as well as the direction and speed. Submarines can use deep currents to drift, enhance concealment, avoid sonar detection, and then pass through enemy-controlled straits and anti-submarine blockades. The thermocline directly affects the concealment of submarines. Due to the presence of thermoclines, sonar is usually better detected in winter than in summer. Density jumps can lead to liquid seabeds and liquid cliffs. Submarines use liquid seabeds to sit and sink, which can contribute to the suddenness of attacks; When the submarine encounters a liquid cliff, it will suddenly sink, threatening the safety of navigation.
In addition, due to the different temperatures, salinity and hydrostatic pressure of each layer of seawater in the ocean, the propagation speed of sound waves in each water layer is also different, and sometimes underwater vocal channels appear. The use of the sound channel can expand the sonar action distance to several convergence area distances, and the submarine can use this particularity to find the enemy at a long distance.
Therefore, it is not excluded that other countries hope to grasp the relevant hydrometeorological data of the sea areas around China with the help of similar unmanned platforms.
From this point of view, once one or more similar equipment is dropped in the waters around me, it will become a reconnaissance fulcrum of other countries stationed in that area, and the unmanned and kinetic energy of the waves will make it have strong self-sustaining and continuous working ability. Therefore, it is indeed necessary to be highly vigilant against this possible threat, and the relevant salvage work done by our fishermen is indeed of great significance to the maintenance of national security, after all, "any covert snooping spy is difficult to break through the solid national defense line."