China unveils details of underwater attack robots that can detect and sink enemy vessels

China has developed underwater robots that can detect and attack enemy submarines without any human guidance.

And although details of the trial of these cutting-edge weapons have only just been released, it was carried out more than a decade ago – meaning the technology is likely to have been refined and developed yet further since then.

The trial was carried out in the Taiwan Strait, a stretch of water that – along with Taiwan itself – China claims sovereignty over and which is the source of ongoing regional tension.

In the trial, an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) used artificial intelligence to spot a dummy submarine 30ft below the surface. As soon as the UUV’s sonar identified the sub, it switched into combat mode.

Sonar and onboard sensors collected and analysed data to help identify the sub’s location before the UUV changed its course, circled its target, and then fired an unarmed torpedo.

The 2010 experiment, which has just been declassified, involved researchers at Harbin Engineering University – China’s leading submarine research centre – and their work on the project is thought to stretch back to the 1990s.

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A lead scientist on the military-funded project wrote that the UUVs could be deployed as part of a group to attack a target.

“The needs of future underwater warfare bring new development opportunities for the unmanned platforms,” wrote Prof Liang Guolong in the Journal of Harbin Engineering University.

On conventional subs, humans need to analyse sonar readings and make decisions on how to react to the information, but on the UUVs “all the subsystems such as information acquisition, target detection, assessment, status and parameter control must have completely independent decision-making capabilities,” the paper said.

One of the UUVs could be left on the seabed and activated if hostilities ever broke out.

It is unclear why China has decided to declassify the information, but it is likely to be part of its ongoing strategy of showing off its regional military strength. The fact the experiment took place in the Taiwan Strait was probably no coincidence, and the public disclosure of the test comes amid tension with Japan and the US over the future of the strait and the island of Taiwan.

Other countries, including the United States, Russia, and Israel, are believed to be working on their own UUV military technology, but it’s not thought that the robots have ever been used in anger.

Some of the AI machines have been found washed up on beaches, and Indonesian fishermen found a two-metre UUV off the coast of one of the country’s islands in December. Military officers were later seen posing with the drone, which was identified as a Chinese Sea Wing.