CNN LIVE TODAY 12:00 April 3, 2001; Tuesday
Security Expert on U.S. Spy Plane Equipment
LOU WATERS, CNN ANCHOR: And joining us now with some insight into all of this, John Pike, a military analyst, an intelligence expert who heads up GlobalSecurity.org. He joins us from Washington.
Welcome, Mr. Pike.
JOHN PIKE, GLOBALSECURITY.ORG: Glad to be here.
WATERS: We have from the Navy an indication that the plane had about 30 minutes to an hour from the time it was bumped 'til the time it landed. What could they have accomplished in that time, and what was -- what were they trying to accomplish?
PIKE: Well, the most important thing would have been to erase the computer tapes that contained all the intelligence that they had collected thus far because that would be the thing that would provide the Chinese with the greatest insight into American collection priorities, what do we want to know, and American collection capabilities, what can this airplane actually intercept.
The other thing that they'd be trying to destroy would be the computer hard drives that contain the software that run the computers that enable this airplane to collect that information, process it, and store it. The National Security Agency has well-established, rigorous standard for erasing computer tapes and computer hard drives to make sure that they can't be read, and that would, obviously, be the first priority of the crew, to keep that out of the hands of any possible adversary.
Now there's other hardware on the airplane, the antennas on the outside, some of the specialized signal-processing electronics inside the plane, that they might not have had time to destroy. But if they managed to erase all those tapes, erase those hard drives, I think the Chinese would be very frustrated trying to learn a lot about this plane.
WATERS: There is no other plane like it in the world. We do not sell this technology to other countries. The EP-3, apparently, can pick up very sensitive signals. So just having the plane -- wouldn't that -- that be of great import to the Chinese military?
PIKE: Well, simply having the plane itself isn't going to tell them everything that having the plane plus the software would tell them, but, obviously, being able to look inside those radomes, the housings for the antennas would tell them what sort of radars or radios we're trying to intercept and how well we would be able to do that.
Getting a look at some of the signal-processing electronics inside the airplane would give them greater insight into it, but it's basically -- this is basically a flying tape recorder, a flying computer system, and if you went in and found that all the tapes had been erased and that all the software had been taken off the computer, you might be able to learn some things but not nearly as much as you'd want to.
WATERS: This is an old game with spy planes on the coast of potential military competitors, is it not? During the Cold War, taking little feints at coastlines and getting planes to scramble and then detecting whatever you can detect in that circumstance. Isn't that what was going on here?
PIKE: Well, I've cer -- well, it's not clear that they were attempting to provoke Chinese air defense, but they, certainly, knew from many decades of flying down the China coast that Chinese fighters would come out, that Chinese air-defense radars would be turned on and, certainly, that's one of the things that they're trying to do, figure out where do the Chinese currently have their air-defense radars located, what are their reaction time, and so forth.
But the distance that they were flying off the coast suggests that this was a routine mission, not attempted -- not intending to provoke the Chinese the way that we had in the past, particularly back in the 1950s, and back then, a lot of our airplanes actually got intentionally shot down rather than unintentionally accidentally damaged, as happened here.
WATERS: John Pike, always a pleasure.
PIKE: Thank you.
WATERS: John Pike with GlobalSecurity.org.
Copyright 2001 Cable News Network
