China protests drone ‘invasion’, India says issue ‘under investigation’

China said on Thursday an Indian drone “invaded” its airspace before crashing on its side of the border, an incident that New Delhi attributed to a technical problem with an unmanned aerial vehicle that was on a routine training mission.

The Chinese foreign ministry said it had lodged “solemn representations” with India over the incident, while the defence ministry expressed its “strong dissatisfaction and opposition”.

Indian defence sources said the UAV that crashed was an Israeli-made Heron, a medium-altitude long endurance drone used in mountainous terrain for surveillance and intelligence gathering along the frontiers with China and Pakistan. This is the first time a Heron has been lost in a cross-border incident, sources said.

In Beijing, foreign ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang told a regular news briefing: “Recently, an Indian unmanned aerial vehicle invaded China’s aerospace in the Sikkim section of the China-India border.”

The Chinese military handled the situation in a “professional” way, he added. The border in Sikkim sector has been “delineated” and the “invasion” violated China’s sovereignty and wasn’t “conducive for peace and tranquility” in the region, Geng said.

Zhang Shuili, deputy chief of the combat bureau of the military’s western theater command, was quoted by official Xinhua news agency as saying: “India’s move has infringed upon China’s territorial sovereignty, and we are strongly dissatisfied with and opposed to this…We will earnestly carry out our duty and resolutely defend our country’s sovereignty and security.”

India’s defence ministry said the UAV was on a “regular training mission” inside Indian territory when it “lost contact with the ground control due to some technical problem and crossed over the LAC” (Line of Actual Control) in Sikkim sector.

In line with the standard protocol, Indian border security personnel immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV, the defence ministry said in a brief statement.

“In response, the Chinese side reverted with the location details of the UAV. The exact cause of the incident is under investigation. The matter is being dealt with in accordance with the established protocols through institutional mechanisms to deal with situations along the India- China border areas,” it added.

Both sides did not give the date when the incident had occurred and the Chinese side did not share information on exactly where the UAV had crashed.

Geng said China has urged India to stop the “activities” of UAVs at the border and work with it to maintain peace at the frontier.

The Indian Army has a fleet of about 45 Heron UAVs, made by the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries, some of which are deployed along the border with China for surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations.

“These UAVs are very helpful in mountainous border areas as they feed airborne intelligence,” a source told Hindustan Times.

The Heron has a range of 350 km and can operate at a maximum height of 10 km or 35,000 feet. The UAV can remain airborne for up to 50 hours, depending on the payload, and has a top speed of 200 kmph.

This new incident with potential for causing friction along the border came about two months after the two countries resolved a standoff of more than 70 days between border troops at Doklam near the Sikkim border.

In June, China accused Indian troops of trespassing into Doklam, which the Chinese refer to as Donglang, a disputed region at the China-Bhutan-India trijunction. China controls the region that is claimed by Bhutan.

Beijing has maintained an 1890 treaty between British India and the then Qing dynasty demarcated or delimited the Sikkim border.

The standoff was resolved at the end of August, and India said it had agreed with China to pull back troops to end the face-off. Reports from Doklam suggested Beijing had halted work on a road that triggered the row.

The decision to withdraw troops ended one of the most serious disputes between the neighbours who share a 3,500-km mountainous border, large stretches of which remain undemarcated.

There have been previous incidents involving drones between India, China and Pakistan.

In 2015, Pakistani forces shot down a drone near the Line of Control, which later turned out to have been manufactured in China. The drone was recognised as the Chinese-made DJI Phantom 3, the Chinese state media had then reported.