Giant Chinese Drone Subs To Punch Holes In US Seabed Surveillance

2025-08-19 12:03:23

(MENAFN- Asia Times) China is preparing to put its undersea ambitions on parade, rolling out giant drone submarines that could one day strike at the US undersea sensor network and tilt the balance of the Pacific's silent war.

This month, Naval News reported that China is expected to unveil two new extra-large uncrewed underwater vehicles (XLUUVs) during a September 3 military parade in Beijing marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

The unveiling will be the first public appearance of these unmanned assets and will seek to signal China's rapid progress in underwater drone technology.

The AJX002 model, approximately 18–20 meters long with pump-jet propulsion and modular transport features, has been observed uncovered during parade rehearsals. A second, larger design-concealed under tarpaulin-features dual stern masts and X-form rudders, suggesting significant design divergence.

The Chinese Ministry of National Defense has stated the parade will showcase“improved weapons, equipment,” underscoring an intent to lead in underwater warfare capabilities.

With at least six XLUUVs rehearsed for display, analysts anticipate a clearer read on China's operational priorities and technological maturity once the vehicles roll past Tiananmen.

If war comes, XLUUVs are the logical tools to go after the US-led undersea surveillance grid that hems in the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and constrains its freedom of action beyond the First Island Chain.

Desmond Ball and Richard Tanter note in their 2015 book“The Tools of Owatatsumi: Japan's Ocean Surveillance and Coastal Defense Capabilities” that by the mid-2000s US undersea surveillance in the western Pacific was centered on the Fish Hook Undersea Defense Line, a modern chain of fixed arrays to monitor Chinese submarines transiting between the East and South China Seas and the Pacific.

Ball and Tanter write that the line arcs from Kyushu's Kagoshima down the Osumi Islands to Okinawa, then via Miyako and Yonaguni past Taiwan to the Philippines' Balabac, onward to Lombok in eastern Indonesia and across the Sunda Strait to northern Sumatra and the Andamans with key nodes at Okinawa and Guam and allied sections provided by Japan and Taiwan.

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