Pak gets Chinese drones to monitor Indian ships

New Delhi: While it continues to engage India militarily and diplomatically, China has clandestinely ramped up the supply of critical surveillance equipment to Pakistan, which illustrates how the two countries are collaborating when it comes to tackling India.

In a recent development, China has supplied at least 100 pieces of DJI surveillance drones, which the Pakistan military will be deploying at its naval assets, to monitor enemy (Indian) ship movements.

Dà-Jiang Innovations or DJI is based in Shenzhen, Guangdong, South-East China, and is known for producing high quality surveillance drones.

This development, as per sources who are monitoring the situation, has come even as Indian Navy had recently increased the deployment of its assets that are under the Eastern and Western Naval Commands, in the Indian Ocean region (IOR) to pre-empt any show of might by the Chinese navy.

“The inputs (images) that will be collected by these drones will be more useful to the Chinese navy than the Pakistani navy and we expect that these images will be shared with the Chinese agencies by Pakistan. The supply of such drones has happened in the past too, but that was in a much smaller number. This time, the number of drones that they have been given is significant. This is a great example to understand China’s intent and how China is looking at the present situation vis-a-vis India,” an official said.

In 2015, China had given five systems of Wing Loong-1 armed UAVs to Pakistan. However, the present supply of surveillance drones, that too in such large numbers, at a critical time like this when India and China are witnessing their worst phase of bilateral relationship in decades, has alarmed officials.

As per intelligence sources, at least two serving officials of ISI were stationed in Beijing before the recent India-China tensions and this number has likely been increased in the past few months to augment the efforts of the Chinese military strategists.