China a threat - again!
From Stratfor.com:
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Could U.S. Spy Plane Advance China's Naval Capabilities?
Summary
China's acquisition of a U.S. Navy EP-3E surveillance plane could
help Beijing develop a more modern military, capable of
projecting force in Asia. The plane could provide Beijing clues
on how to advance its naval capabilities - the key thrust of its
modernization - without the knowledge of Western intelligence.
China has a long history of reverse engineering foreign
technology. If successful in this case, it will better understand
how the electronically advanced U.S. military operates.
Analysis
China has embarked on a major modernization of its military
forces, focusing most heavily on developing a blue-water navy
capable of operating far from its 12,000-kilometer (11,938 miles)
shoreline out into the South China Sea to the contested Spratly
Islands and beyond.
The U.S. EP-3E Aires II signals intelligence (SIGINT) aircraft -
probably searching for signs of Chinese submarine activities by
monitoring military communications traffic in area - remains in
Chinese military hands. What was on board could help speed up
that modernization because electronic warfare (EW) skills,
including protecting and intercepting military communications and
radar traffic, have been a major deficiency that Beijing has been
working to overcome.
The American spy plane on Hainan Island could provide Beijing not
only with technology and information to help hide its own
military activities from the United States and others, but also
with critical knowledge of how to monitor other militaries'
movements and gauge their motives. Although an increasingly
difficult task, technological know-how gained from reverse
engineering the electronic components and other high-tech
eavesdropping devices could propel China, and the People's
Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) in particular, further toward its
long-term goal of being a major conventional military power in
the region.
Clearly, the technology found on board in the EP-3E could give
China electronic capabilities that would have taken years for it
to develop on its own. The plane's systems, designed to detect
and classify a wide range of electronic signals from satellite
transmissions to radar waves, could help China block its own
emissions so that the United States and others cannot listen in.
By knowing the frequencies, the U.S. hones in on and how they are
processed, Beijing could develop effective countermeasures.
The PLAN's EW efforts have emphasized the development of radars
that can frequency hop, antennas that reduce signal levels and
digital processing technologies for signal canceling to conceal
what it is up to.
The EP-3E also has some of the physical sub-hunting
characteristics of its predecessor the P-3 Orion, which could
also be highly useful in China's efforts to operate its
submarines far from the mainland without detection.
Perhaps more importantly, the EP-3E could improve China's ability
to monitor and identify military forces in the region. "The
PLAN's major combatants are expected to have an extensive EW
suite," the Pentagon told Congress in 1998. Its naval forces
"will have intercept systems designed to detect and locate enemy
radar and communications signals."
The PLAN wants to intercept radar, communications and electro-
optical and infrared threats as well as have the capability to
employ countermeasures against them, the U.S. intelligence
community warns.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. Army War College's
Strategic Studies Institute concluded that while China generally
views the American military presence in East Asia as beneficial
to regional stability, PLAN strategists "believe that the U.S.
Navy's presence in the Western Pacific, and surrounding water,
will become destabilizing."
As a result, according to Lanxin Xiang at the Programme for
Strategic and International Security Studies in Geneva,
Switzerland, "the Chinese leadership has always believed that
concentrating efforts to enhance defensive and offensive
capabilities of one service, the PLAN, is the most cost-
effective."
Seeking to minimize the naval threat the United States and others
pose should China and Taiwan go to blows or Beijing decide to
move on the hotly contested Spratly Islands, the PLAN has
procured Russian destroyers, is developing a new frigate and more
importantly is focusing its energies on putting to sea a highly
advanced submarine force.
The U.S. spy, plane, according to Chinese sources and a series of
incidents in recent months and years, was monitoring submarine
maneuvers in the South China Sea to gather intelligence on a new,
very quiet version of the Kilo class diesel submarine completed a
year ago as well as a new Chinese version of the Russian Victor
III attack submarine. The Victor III was to be outfitted with
anti-ship missiles that could target American aircraft carriers,
surface ships and submarines for the first time. According to
open source materials, the Victor III was to be completed in late
2000 or early 2001.
U.S. military officials in the Pacific maintained as recently as
March 28 that it is already becoming increasingly difficult to
keep tabs on what the Chinese and other militaries in the region
are doing as they seek to advance their secure communications and
other capabilities to cloak their activities.
"Intelligence is essential to monitor potential adversary
developments and preparations so that we can train our forces for
the threats they face and move them into position in a timely
fashion," Adm. Dennis Blair, commander in chief of the U.S.
Pacific Command, told the U.S. Congress in prepared testimony.
"Shortages of airborne intelligence, surveillance and
reconnaissance (ISR) assets - U-2s, RC-135s, EP-3s -
significantly impact readiness ratings. These shortfalls diminish
our situational awareness, early indications and warning (I&W),
and deep knowledge of the capabilities, plans and intentions of
key theaters in our area of responsibility. We do not have the
surge capability to monitor crises or cyclical increases of
potential adversary activities."
The PLAN has been working overtime to further hide its activities
from the United States and other Western militaries as it
aggressively pursues what it calls "information dominance."
In May 1996, the People's Liberation Army Daily published an
article calling for greater attention to radar and communications
emission security. The Chinese have also studied the success of
U.S. SIGINT in monitoring Iraqi electronic countermeasures before
and during the Gulf War.
"Beijing's highest priority for strategic modernization is in the
realm of information," according to Mark Stokes of the
nonpartisan Strategic Studies Institute. "One of the most
important pillars in China's quest for information dominance is
denying an adversary information on [military] plans, force
deployments and vulnerabilities, and protecting the [military's]
ability to command and control its forces."
China is likely to use one of its primary strengths to help
achieve these goals: reverse engineering foreign technology. This
has come in handy in the past, most recently when it reportedly
pilfered U.S. nuclear weapons secrets. "China's mostly likely
avenue of defense modernization is the process of reverse
engineering a modern military," the U.S. Center for Naval
Analysis said in a 1996 report.
The extent to which China can reverse engineer the EP-3E's
onboard systems will probably depend on two factors: how much the
crew destroyed before landing and how much of the aircraft's
high-tech systems are software-based versus hardware-based. The
software is the prize because it is computer code that allows the
aircraft to process what it is listening to, while the hardware
is not as important from an intelligence perspective.
On the first point, there have been conflicting reports on how
much of the most sensitive technologies on board the crew was
able to conceal. But Pentagon sources say the pilot was ordered
before taking off from Japan to put the safety of the crew first
and to make all else secondary, including protecting the plane's
secrets. The short duration between the panel's collision with a
Chinese fighter jet and its landing makes it likely that only
some of the precautions were taken.
On the second point, military sources familiar with the EP-3E
contend that while it is the most advanced aircraft of its kind,
much of its technology dates back several decades. While the
fleet of 11 Aires planes has gone through subsequent upgrades to
introduce the latest in digital processing capabilities, it still
depends highly on more conventional, even analog, eavesdropping
technologies that are much easier to reverse engineer. For
example, the latest in voice processors has only been outfitted
on a portion of the fleet, according to military sources. So
there could still be a lot to learn and ultimately end up in the
Chinese military.
According to a 1998 report by the U.S. Department of Defense,
"China is seeking to procure state-of-the-art intercept,
direction-finding and jamming equipment to upgrade poorly
equipped ground-based, ship borne and air forces, and to serve as
a template for a robust reverse-engineering effort. In so doing,
China has established close commercial ties with electronic
companies in numerous countries."
The Chinese, the report added, are expected to produce the
majority of the naval EW systems; however, some foreign systems
or components are imported from various sources, most likely from
Europe and Russia. Significantly, the report notes: "The
performance of Chinese naval EW systems probably will continue to
lag behind state-of-the-art Western EW systems."
Now, with the EP-3E - whose crew may or may not have destroyed
all the sensitive technology and data on board the aircraft
before making an emergency landing; one former pilot said it is
unlikely any permanent damage was done - the Chinese may not be
lagging as much for long.
Despite the final disposition of the American EP-3E and its crew,
China has a piece of intelligence-gathering equipment that could,
if the conditions are right, go along way in helping it speed up
its efforts to develop and equip a high-tech naval force that can
operate more freely in Chinese territorial waters and well
beyond, particularly in the South China Sea.
Relying on its experience in reverse engineering foreign
technologies, the Chinese will try and glean as much as they can
from the American spy plane. If successful, the Chinese naval
capabilities and intensions that the United States has been so
keen to uncover may become all that much harder to gauge.
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