Washington Post Tuesday, April 3, 2001; Page A17
Crew Had 'Destruction Plan'
Plane's Personnel Trained to Destroy Equipment, Data
By Edward Walsh
Washington Post Staff Writer
The crew of the Navy plane that collided with a Chinese jet fighter was trained to destroy the highly sensitive equipment and classified material aboard the aircraft in such circumstances, Navy officials and others familiar with Navy practices said yesterday. The crew of the EP-3E Aries II electronic warfare and surveillance aircraft radioed that it landed safely at a Chinese naval air base on Hainan Island after its collision over the South China Sea, but has not been heard from since. U.S. officials said they do not know the condition of the computers and electronic eavesdropping devices aboard the aircraft. But a Navy official said that, like all military personnel carrying classified equipment and documents, the crew of 24 had a "classified destruction plan" for what to do in such an emergency. "If the plan called on them to destroy classified material, you can bet that's what they were doing" as the four-engine, turboprop plane lumbered toward the Chinese air base, the official said. How such a plan would be carried out "depends on circumstances," he added. Others suggested that the destruction techniques could include the use of specially configured grenades and computer memory-erasure devices. But a senior defense official said last night the crew had also resorted to hammers and hatchets. According to the Pentagon, the crew consisted of 22 Navy personnel, one Marine and one member of the Air Force. Among them were three women and eight cryptologists -- code specialists involved in decoding and analyzing the electronic information picked up by the plane. About a dozen EP-3E aircraft are used to intercept radio, telephone and fax communications, and to gather information on the military movements and capabilities of potential adversaries. The plane is not available for purchase by other nations. "We'll sell a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but we're not selling these to anybody," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense, space and intelligence policy analysis organization. Pike said the EP-3E, which can fly for about 12 hours, can be "enormously informative." Coupled with a worldwide network of airfields, the plane's range of about 3,000 miles means "there is very little of interest that they cannot monitor," he said. Pike said the EP-3E can intercept communications that are broadcast and pinpoint the location of military headquarters, ships, radio and radar installations and other electronic equipment in use. "Basically, they just fly down the coast of China and check to see who is at home," he said. But the Chinese often change electronic frequencies, he said, "and that is why they keep flying these things. It's sort of like your phone book is always going bad, and you would not want to go into battle with a three-year-old phone book. So you continuously update the electronic order of battle." Pike said the crew would have rehearsed a "standard procedure" to protect the most sensitive equipment and material on the aircraft if something went wrong. "Destroying the computer tapes and the computer hard drives would protect most of what is sensitive about the airplane," he said. "The Chinese would not be able to see what the airplane had collected, and would have a hard time understanding the capabilities of the plane if they could not turn the computers on. "You do that by destroying the tapes the intelligence was gathered on and destroying the hard drives. It is a fairly straightforward procedure that almost certainly could be done in the time that was available." Pike said the aircraft contains "special-purpose signal-processing computers," and that "if somebody had an ax, they might profitably try to smash some of that stuff." If the crew did not destroy the equipment, Chinese scientists might figure out how it works and duplicate it. Pike noted that by inspecting the aircraft, the Chinese "would gain some insight" into how U.S. electronic surveillance missions operate -- for example, on how weak a signal could be detected by the EP-3E, which might allow them to better protect themselves from eavesdropping. "You can reduce the damage" from the emergency landing in Chinese territory, "but you cannot eliminate it," Pike said. Navy officials said the surveillance aircraft was unarmed and crews on such planes generally do not carry guns. They estimated that it took the plane between 30 minutes and an hour to fly to Hainan Island after the collision. The Navy also continued to insist that the collision was the fault of the pilot of the Chinese jet. One official said that in recent months, Chinese jets that routinely intercept the U.S. surveillance aircraft were "just coming in too close. That's been increasing over the last couple of months. They've been coming closer and closer." The official would not say how often U.S. aircraft patrol near the Chinese coast, but he insisted the surveillance planes remain in international airspace. "There has been no reason to change the way we have been doing things," he said. A retired naval officer with experience in the Pacific said he had been told Chinese pilots recently have been "kind of hot-dogging it around the [U.S.] aircraft." The EP-3E, he said, "is kind of like an elephant up there. He flies straight and level. He doesn't take an unforeseen action." "These are pretty big airplanes," said another retired Navy officer, Rear Adm. Michael A. McDevitt. "It's certainly not a sports car. The EP-3 wasn't trying to intercept the fighter, and it certainly was not doing evasive things." The EP-3E is a converted version of the P-3 Orion, a Navy anti-submarine warfare aircraft. It traces its airframe roots to the ill-fated Lockheed Electra commercial aircraft. Although it carries some of the most sophisticated electronic equipment available, the plane is far from glamorous. It is about the size of a Boeing 737 commercial plane and has a top speed of about 340 mph.
