China may have removed equipment from spy plane
Tuesday, April 03, 2001 11:31 AM EDT
WASHINGTON, Apr 03, 2001 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- Chinese
officials have taken equipment off the U.S. Navy spy plane that made an
emergency landing at a Chinese base March 31 after a collision with a Chinese
fighter jet, U.S. media are reporting, citing Pentagon sources.
The EP-3 is an electronic signals surveillance aircraft and is loaded with
sophisticated equipment used to collect intelligence on an adversary's weapons,
command and control capabilities and operations.
The United States claims that the aircraft, because it made an emergency
landing, should be considered sovereign territory like a U.S. embassy, and
therefore should be off limits to the Chinese.
"The airplane itself, military aircraft of all countries in situations like
this, have sovereign immunity. That is, no other country can go aboard them or
keep them," said U.S. Pacific Command chief Adm. Dennis Blair said Sunday in a
press conference.
However, the Navy presumes Chinese boarded the plane shortly after it landed on
a military base on Hainan Island. The last radio message from the crew said it
was being ordered to shut down its operation.
In the event of just such a landing, the crew was trained to destroy classified
paperwork and wipe clean computer memories, and may have even physically
destroyed some of the equipment.
"If I were them I would have been pitching stuff out the back," said a U.S.
intelligence official.
The Chinese military is well-known for its ability to reverse engineer
sophisticated equipment -- that is, deconstruct a finished product to discern
how it works, its capabilities and recreate it for their own use, the official
said.
By PAMELA HESS
Copyright 2001 by United Press International.
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