Update | China seizes US underwater drone in South China Sea

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.

The incident took place on December 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).

“We call upon China to return our UUV immediately, and to comply with all of its obligations under international law,“ Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said in the statement. The vehicle is an unclassified “ocean glider” system used around world to gather data on salinity, water temperature and sound speed.

The incident is the latest in a string of confrontations in the region, focusing renewed attention on the strained relations over China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, an issue that President-elect Donald Trump will inherit when he takes office next month.

Trump, who campaigned on a promise to extract better terms for trade with China, already has provoked condemnation from Beijing for taking a phone call from Taiwan’s president and questioning the “One-China” policy for Taiwan and the mainland.

“At the very least this is the type of completely mundane sort of activity on the part of the United States or any other country operating freely in international waters that could lead to accidents or even potential conflict,” said Michael Fuchs, deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs from 2013 to 2016 and now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.