Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said Saturday they are gathering information about the Americans’ unmanned underwater vehicle in South China Sea which was seized by China.

“We did not know the US is using one in South China Sea,” Lorenzana said, referring to the drone seized by a Chinese ship off the waters of Subic Bay.

He said the Philippines does not know if the US drone was seized within its territorial waters.

“No… we were not aware, nor do we know if this was within our 12 mile territorial waters or within our exclusive economic zone (EEZ),” Lorenzana told Daily Manila Shimbun in a text message.

“We are verifying from the Americans,” he added.

The incident came as a US think-tank claimed that China is installing weapons in the islands at the disputed South China Sea.

In a statement, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said “with the use of appropriate government-to-government channels, the (US) Defense Department has called upon China to immediately return an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) that it unlawfully seized yesterday in the South China Sea,”

“The UUV is a sovereign immune vessel of the United States. We call upon China to return our UUV immediately and to comply with all of its obligations under international law," he said.

Cook said “unmanned underwater vehicle was seized by the Chinese Navy in international waters off the coast of the Philippines Dec. 15.”

Pentagon press operations director Navy Capt. Jeff Davis said “a Chinese Navy Dalang-III class submarine rescue vessel launched a small boat and retrieved the UUV as the oceanographic survey ship USNS Bowditch was attempting to retrieve it and a second UUV in the South China Sea.”

“The incident occurred in international waters about 50 nautical miles northwest of Subic Bay Naval Air Station in the Philippines,” he said.

“Bridge-to-bridge communications took place between the Bowditch and Chinese ships, but demands to have the UUV returned were ignored,” he added.

“It is ours. It is clearly marked; we’d like to have it back and (would) like this to never happen again,” Davis noted. Robina Asido/DMS