Sensors and Mapping: What China’s Survey Ship May be Up To Off Australia
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[By Euan Graham and Ray Powell]<\/em><\/p>\n Civilian exploration may be the official mission of a Chinese deep-sea research ship that sailed clockwise around Australia over the past week and is now loitering west of the continent. But maybe it\u2019s also attending to naval duties.<\/p>\n These could have included laying or servicing seabed acoustic sensors and possibly detailed mapping of parts of the ocean floor to support future submarine operations.<\/p>\n Open-source tracking data enables such educated guesses to be made, without discounting the possibilities of economic and scientific data-gathering.<\/p>\n The ship,\u00a0Tansuo Yi Hao\u00a0<\/em>(Exploration 1<\/em>) took a similar route around Australia in January 2023, investigating 1100km of the Diamantina Trench over 34 days. China\u2019s state media later\u00a0said\u00a0this was the\u00a0first time\u00a0the bottom of the trench had been reached. The ship carries a crewed submersible, the\u00a0Fendouzhe\u00a0<\/em>(Striver<\/em>), capable of long-duration forays to the seabed in depths exceeding 10,000 metres.<\/p>\n As in 2023, rather than proceeding directly home from New Zealand, where it was conducting\u00a0joint activities\u00a0with a partner institution, the ship has again undertaken a long deviation around Australia. Its transitory presence in the Bass Strait and inside Australia\u2019s 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) was nonetheless permissible under international law, as long as the ship undertook no commercial survey activity and maintained continuous passage, showing \u2018due regard\u2019 to the coastal state.<\/p>\n However, speculation quickly grew that\u00a0Tansuo Yi Hao\u00a0<\/em>could be gathering intelligence on Australia\u2019s seabed cables. When questioned by media about its presence, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he \u2018would prefer that it wasn\u2019t there\u2019.<\/p>\n Tansuo Yi Hao<\/em>\u00a0subsequently stayed mostly outside of the EEZ as it traversed the Great Australian Bight. Nor did it appear to loiter before reaching the Diamantina Trench, about 1100km off the Western Australian coast and well beyond Australia\u2019s maritime jurisdiction.<\/p>\n Given the inherently dual-use nature of China\u2019s marine scientific research assets, it would be prudent to assume that\u00a0Tansuo Yi Hao<\/em>\u00a0and the submersible are subject to some level of military tasking. They belong to China\u2019s Institute of Acoustics, which according to its own\u00a0website\u00a0has ties to the armed forces, dating back decades.<\/p>\n Sending a survey ship around Australia is less obviously coercive than similarly deploying a naval task group, as Beijing did in February and March, and China\u2019s survey vessels are more common near Australia than generally known. But the passage is a further demonstration of China\u2019s growing strategic reach and interest in operating beyond the first island chain.<\/p>\n According to\u00a0automatic information system\u00a0data from\u00a0Starboard Maritime Intelligence,\u00a0Tansuo Yi Hao<\/em>\u00a0has paused daily for 12 to 17 hours over the Diamantina Trench since 6 April. This is consistent with the reported underwater endurance of\u00a0Fendouzhe<\/em>\u00a0of up to 15 hours. During that time,\u00a0Fendouzhe<\/em>\u00a0could have\u00a0deployed new devices or serviced acoustic arrays\u00a0already on the seabed near the trench. The sensors could gather valuable military intelligence about signatures of ships that pass them.<\/p>\n The Diamantina Trench is too far away to be of obvious use for monitoring the approaches to HMAS Stirling, Australia\u2019s sole submarine base and the main hub for future combined Australian, British and US submarine operations under AUKUS. It is also too deep for submarine operations. However, China\u00a0reportedly\u00a0has developed deep-sea surveillance networks that can operate in the extreme pressures of ocean trenches and use acoustic characteristics of the trenches to detect sounds from as far away as 1000km, including from passing ships and submarines. Listening devices are said to be attached to a seabed cable that is connected to a small buoy that in turn serves as a battery power source and relay for satellite communications. Around a decade ago, two arrays were reportedly laid in deep sea trenches near Guam and near Yap, an island in the Federated States of Micronesia. Since then, China\u2019s sensing technology has continued to advance at an impressive pace.<\/p>\n The survey ship\u2019s return visit to the Diamantina Trench after two years could be associated with a need to service or replace equipment and collect data gathered since 2023. Unfortunately, Australia has very limited capabilities for monitoring the seabed beyond its continental shelf, so it would likely be none the wiser if\u00a0Tansuo Yi Hao\u00a0<\/em>deployed seabed devices during its current visit\u2014or two years ago, for that matter.<\/p>\n To be sure, China\u2019s deep-sea survey expeditions have economic and prestige motivations, which may even be preponderant. However, it would be foolhardy to discount the possibility that\u00a0Tansuo Yi Hao\u00a0<\/em>and other specialised survey vessels are also used to support China\u2019s naval ambitions.<\/p>\n China\u2019s navy is probably interested in seabed mapping for its own future submarine operations, and while submersibles are able to map only limited areas, with emerging technologies they can do so\u00a0in impressive detail.<\/p>\n In the public domain at least, it remains unclear whether Chinese submarines have previously operated south of Australia. But\u00a0Tansuo Yi Hao\u2019s<\/em> two recent survey expeditions, taken together with China\u2019s recent warship transit south about Australia, suggests Beijing\u2019s strategic interest in Australia\u2019s\u00a0southern seaboard\u00a0is rising. This is no surprise given the growing strategic importance of HMAS Stirling.<\/p>\n Australia must understand that China is paying it greater attention, in strategic terms, as a result of the AUKUS initiative and the developing footprint of the US force posture here. This is likely to motivate a more regular Chinese maritime presence in our vicinity, comprising not only military assets but dual-use capabilities such as survey ships. Assuming otherwise would be akin to burying our heads in the sand.<\/p>\n Euan Graham\u00a0is a senior analyst at ASPI.\u00a0Ray Powell\u00a0is the director of SeaLight, a maritime transparency project at Stanford University. He was the US defence attache to Australia from 2017 to 2020.<\/em><\/p>\n This article appears courtesy of The Strategist and may be found in its original form here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Top image:\u00a0Tansuo Yi Hao (Kareen Schnabel \/ CC BY SA 4.0<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \t
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![Kareen Schnabel \/ CC BY SA 4.0<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \t\n <\/BR><\/p>\n \t\n<\/BR>\nGo to maritime executive<\/a>\n \t\n <\/BR><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sensors and Mapping: What China’s Survey Ship May be Up To Off Australia \u00a0 [By Euan Graham and Ray Powell] Civilian exploration may be the official mission of a Chinese deep-sea research ship that sailed clockwise around Australia over the past week and is now loitering west of the continent. But maybe it\u2019s also attending […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-7538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-maritime-executive","tag-maritime-executive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/krogragg.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7538"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/krogragg.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/krogragg.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krogragg.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krogragg.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/krogragg.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7538\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/krogragg.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krogragg.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krogragg.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Chinese_research_vessel_Tan_Suo_Yi_Hao.jpg\"){kind=link}