Jakarta. Indonesia wants its fishing villages to be its eyes and ears for underwater drones and suspicious maritime activities, according to a military top brass, as Jakarta seeks to involve coastal communities in safeguarding security.

President Prabowo Subianto aims to modernize roughly 5,000 fishing villages by 2029, equipping them with cold storage and ports, among other improvements. Bambang Trisnohadi, the chief of staff for territorial affairs at the Armed Forces, recently revealed that these fishing villages would go beyond just beefing up the coastal economy. The world’s largest archipelagic country is also looking to raise maritime domain awareness among its fisherfolk.

“We are trying to use the fishing villages or fishermen to see and report to authorities of any suspicious activities in the sea,” Bambang said at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Saturday.

These communities are likely “to be the first to notice” illegal fishing, smuggling, piracy, or other maritime threats, according to Bambang. 

“A secure coastline begins with secure coastal populations,” he told the premier defense forum.

Bambang admitted that Jakarta had raised concerns of the drone sightings with ASEAN nations.  

Local fishermen have spotted foreign underwater drones in recent years. Most recently, an Indonesian fisherman caught a torpedo-like object of suspected Chinese origin near the Lombok Strait, a key water route leading to Australia, last month.  The discovery came amidst China’s heightened underwater operations in sensitive areas. 

The broad objective of the fishing village program was to expedite the country’s blue economy and boost people’s welfare. Prabowo also expects the caught fish will also end up in the government-funded school lunches for kids across the country. Indonesia is working with British engineering giant Babcock to equip them with more modern fishing vessels as part of a 4 billion pounds or roughly $5.4 billion deal.