The Navy Wants Drones to Counter China’s Gray-Zone Moves

Even as the U.S. Navy expands its drone experiments, its top leaders say the fleet has much to learn before deploying unmanned systems to defend Taiwan from possible attack in the next few years. But they said that lessons from South America’s seas will help the Navy to refine and build intelligence-gathering and -sensing missions that will be highly relevant to countering China.

“The technologies and platforms we are bringing to the region will address several significant challenges,” Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said during a Tuesday speech at the Sea-Air-Space conference outside Washington, D.C. “These include narcotics and human trafficking, as well as economic and ecological harm caused by illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, which the People's Republic of China with their distant water fishing fleet participates, in both the Pacific Coast and the Atlantic Coast.”