Fears over what China may learn from EP-3 plane

WASHINGTON - The crew of the crippled United States EP-3 spy plane packed with millions of dollars of state-of-the-art surveillance technology were trained to smash the equipment if they feared it would fall into the hands of the Chinese.

Officials said yesterday that standard procedures would call on the crew to do everything they could to stop the electronic equipment being accessed.

There has been no communication with the crew since shortly after the landing on Hainan Island so US defence officials said they were uncertain whether all the top-secret material had been destroyed.

One method was to use special grenades, but there were a number of ways to destroy such equipment, said a retired military officer familiar with the plane.

As officials yesterday stressed their worries about the 24 crew, including three women, still being held by the Chinese, there was equal, perhaps even more concern about the technology carried on the plane.

While it was fully expected the Navy aircrew would be handed over to US officials in China, it seemed far less certain whether Beijing would heed demands to treat the EP-3 as "sovereign territory."

US officials said yesterday that armed Chinese military personnel had boarded the plane soon after it landed on Hainan, suggesting that Beijing had ignored such requests.

The EP-3 has been described as one of the US military's most sensitive pieces of hardware.

Powered by four turbo-prop engines, it is a mobile electronic eavesdropping machine, in this case used to gather information about Chinese missiles aimed at Taiwan as well as troop movements in and out of Hong Kong.

The EP-3 has flown over the borders of China, Russia and North Korea since the early 1960s.

This flight took off from the Japanese island of Okinawa, about 1610km from Hainan.

"There is a considerable amount of equipment on there that is, I would guess, superior to the Chinese military's," said Navy analyst and author Norman Polmar.

"For them to obtain it would be a real intelligence gain and our loss."

Paul Beaver, of military analysts Jane's Information Group, said: "It's quite catastrophic if they have actually seized [the plane]. We don't know what they've actually done yet.

"It's catastrophic ... if they've managed to obtain access to the computers and the hard disks.

"The Chinese will probably sell the information to the Russians, so it means everyone will have access to one of the most sophisticated intelligence-gathering airplanes in the world."

Beaver said the crew were trained to destroy their computer hard drive and software if there was a danger that Chinese officials might gain access to the plane.

He said the plane might have a system for jettisoning sensitive computer parts into the sea in case of trouble, but it would be hard to destroy all the electronic equipment quickly.

John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defence policy organisation, said the EP-3 aircraft could pick up any radio or radar transmission within a radius of several hundred kilometres.

Chinese access to the plane would help "them understand what we're listening to and suggest where they need to have better security."

- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS

Herald Online feature: Spy plane standoff

Map

China Daily

China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Official site of Chinese Government

Jane's Military Aerospace: EP3

US Pacific Command


China People's Daily