Photos show China removed equipment from plane
WASHINGTON, Apr 03, 2001 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- Chinese
officials have removed equipment from a U.S. Navy spy plane that made an
emergency landing at a Chinese base after a mid-air collision with a fighter jet
March 31, a former intelligence official who has seen classified satellite
photos of the base told United Press International Tuesday.
The source also echoed the fears of many Pentagon officials that the Chinese are
unlikely to ever return the plane.
"The chances of getting this airplane back are pretty close to nil," he said.
The official said he had seen four images from two KH-11 "Keyhole" satellites,
which are clear enough to see details -- including racks of the plane's
equipment sitting on the tarmac around the aircraft and damage to the EP-3's
propeller, engine and wing.
The EP-3 was forced to make an emergency landing on Hainan Island after a
Chinese fighter sent out to intercept the aircraft instead collided with it. The
Chinese fighter and its pilot are still missing. China has blamed the United
States for the incident, saying the aircraft violated its airspace.
The sun-synchronous KH-11s pass over the Earth at an altitude of around 500
miles twice a day, taking high-resolution snap shots. The electro-optical
pictures have better than one-meter resolution and are beamed to a U.S. ground
station in near-real time.
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 equipment is mounted on
metal racks inside the shell of the 100-foot long plane, which carries a crew of
24.
The EP-3 could not have landed in a better place for China or a worse one for
U.S. military intelligence. Hainan island is host to one of China's largest
electronic-signals-intelligence complexes and is manned by experts who can glean
critical information on the aircraft's capabilities if they gain access to the
Navy's EP-3, also a "SIGINT" collector, Pentagon sources said. Hainan is also
home to a major Chinese satellite-communications intercept facility.
The United States claims that the aircraft, because it made an emergency
landing, should be considered sovereign territory like a U.S. embassy and is
therefore off limits to the Chinese.
President Bush Monday warned China against "further" tampering with or damage to
the aircraft.
"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.
Pentagon officials say they are concerned the aircraft will never be returned.
They speculate that China will say it is holding it as evidence of U.S.
violation of international law.
They made clear Tuesday that even if the Chinese strip and dismantle the
aircraft in order to reverse engineer it, the U.S. would still -- for political
reasons -- demand its return.
By PAMELA HESS
Copyright 2001 by United Press International. |
