The Royal Navy's HMS Queen Elizabeth tracked down and chased a Chinese spy submarine, new footage has revealed.
The ship, which can carry up to 40 aircrafts, is the largest and most powerful vessel ever constructed for the Royal Navy and also boasts state-of-the-art weaponry.
Two-minute-long footage shows how naval officers worryingly discover a foreign vessel using state of the art sonobuoys — small sonar systems that are ejected from ships into the water to pick up engine and propeller sounds from submarines.
The footage from a new BBC documentary shows officers rapidly deploying a helicopter which drops their sonobuoys into the water to accurately triangulate the vessel.
The Chinese vessel is then tracked by the Navy heading away from the warship.
One naval officer says: “So what we thought was a submarine, is now definitely a submarine. It’s not a whale.
“If this had been in a different scenario, a conflict situation it would have proven that we’d have detected something, in ample time, protected the main body of the carrier.
“Then you could have started a weapon chain against the submarine that was detected to neutralise the threat. So we beat them to draw.”
Enemy submarines often lie underneath commercial fishing vessels, on the edge of Britain’s 12-mile nautical border.
All six of China’s nuclear-powered submarines have been equipped with new missiles, which reportedly have a range of up to 7,500 miles. Stoking fears of their ability to strike US territory.
The previous missiles had a range of up to 4,500 miles, which limited their range from Chinese waters to parts of Alaska.
The news comes as the US government warned that Chinese spy balloons like the one the US shot down are part of a worldwide Chinese surveillance 'fleet.'
Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, said they have only just begun briefing other countries about findings, as the US “was not the only target of this broader program."
The UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said it was highly likely that a similar balloon may have floated over Britain, collecting information from below.
Jens Stoltenberg, Nato secretary-general, also expressed concern: “The Chinese balloon over the United States confirms a pattern of Chinese behaviour where we see that China over the last years has invested in new military capabilities.
“We’ve also seen increased Chinese intelligence activities in Europe. They use satellites, they use cyber, and as we’ve seen over the United States, also balloons. So we just have to be vigilant.”
