But the U.S. must probe even further to catch up with China’s access to the ocean’s deepest reaches
Earlier this year the U.S. Department of Defense suddenly faced the catastrophic prospect of forfeiting crucial defense technology to a rival when a military aircraft—packed with highly classified systems—vanished in the South China Sea. The disappearance of the single-engine stealth jet, an F-35C Joint Strike Fighter, triggered a major search-and-recovery effort by a little-known Navy organization that specializes in ocean retrieval.
Tai Ming Chung, an expert on China’s military modernization, who works at the University of California, San Diego, says Beijing’s ability to develop stronger weapons relies heavily on absorbing foreign technology and know-how.
In 2022 the swim fin was on the other foot—and the importance of the technological treasure sitting on the seabed was gargantuan. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is the most expensive weapon system acquisition in history. The U.S. military alone plans to procure 2,456 F-35s at a cost of $322 billion, excluding research and development costs, over decades.
SUPSALV, a Navy organization formed in the wake of Japan’s devastating 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, supports marine salvage operations, provides pollution abatement expertise and helps with underwater vessel repair. Within SUPSALV, a specialized team of 10 Navy sailors and civilians oversees about half a dozen ocean-floor object recovery missions each year at depths between 330 and 20,000 feet.
The total time between crash and recovery: 38 days and 37 nights. By traditional Navy standards, this would be considered a success. But in recent years, technology for moving through the deepest parts of the ocean has improved—including technology developed by China. That means equipment that could once remain at the bottom of the ocean for weeks and be considered out of reach will, in future, be more accessible to organizations other than SUPSALV.
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