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Satellite Photos Show Chinese Trucks Around U.S. Spy Plane

NATALIE ALLEN, CNN ANCHOR: And as we've said, a U.S. commercial satellite has spotted seven Chinese trucks around the U.S. Navy spy plane there on Hainan Island. For more about that, let's go to CNN's Jeanne Meserve. She's with a guest in our Washington studio.

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Natalie, joining me is John Pike. He is director of Globalsecurity.org. He is also a defense and intelligence analyst. First, Natalie just mentioned the trucks. We see here a satellite image taken on the 4th of April, another taken on the 9th, not the 10th, as this indicates.

JOHN PIKE, DIRECTOR, GLOBALSECURITY.ORG: Right. MESERVE: And we see the trucks right here. PIKE: That's the most obvious change that we see in the new image, this convoy of vehicles here, a total of seven of them. Frankly, I was surprised not to see those in the first image, because I would have thought the Chinese would have run right out there to look at the plane. The fact that we do see these trucks out there about 24-36 hours ago suggest that the Chinese are starting to look very closely at what's inside this aircraft.

MESERVE: And possibly taking parts of it away. PIKE: Well, certainly the assumption would be that they would want to get a look at the electronics inside the aircraft, some of the specialized signal processors, some of the antenna on the outside of the aircraft to get a better understanding of what it can do.

MESERVE: Now, Jamie McIntyre mentioned this second interesting point about this photograph, and you can point it out with your telestrator there: what's happening with the fuselage of the plane.

PIKE: Well, one of the things that's immediately noticeable about the plane is that this bite that's been taken out of the side of it right here, sort of looked look like Jaws went to work on it. Your first impression is that they've ripped off the back -- the skin of the fuselage. Now, there are some other possible interpretations for this, of course. It could be that they've put a tarp over the aircraft there. It could be that they've got some sort of work apparatus on the outside of it. The other thing that's also interesting that in the first photograph you can see this "canoe" on the back of the airplane.

MESERVE: And what is that canoe?

PIKE: That's basically an aerodynamic housing fairing on the top of the airplane. They have a number of very sensitive antenna in there. And then on the new photograph, we just don't see the canoe.

MESERVE: Now, we heard the Pentagon spokesman a short time ago, and Pentagon sources have spoken to Jamie McIntyre about this. They say they have no indications that the fuselage is being disassembled, that they have some better photographs, and that this... (CROSSTALK)

PIKE: Well, their photos are a lot better, let me tell you.

(LAUGHTER) MESERVE: But they say this could be a trick of light and shadow or some other problem with this satellite imagery. Do you buy that?

PIKE: Well, it's certainly possible that there's some trick of shadow or the way the light is. This second image isn't quite as sharp as the first one. With imagery like this, it's always difficult to compare one for the other. But it's clearly the case with these trucks out there and with at least the change in the appearance of the aircraft that the Chinese are paying much closer attention to this airplane in the last day or two than they were last week.

MESERVE: Now, if you're correct and they are in fact disassembling from the outside, why would they do that? What would they be going after? PIKE: Well, you would expect them to do something like that in order to get a look at the electronics inside the aircraft. Basically, this airplane is stuffed with black boxes, specialized signal processors. If they wanted to take the plane apart, get a look at that hardware, it might be easier to get at it from the outside rather than from the inside.

MESERVE: OK,

John Pike, thanks so much for joining us and taking a look at these photographs.

PIKE: Thank you.

MESERVE: And explaining them -- thanks. Natalie, back to you in Atlanta.

ALLEN: Jeanne, thank you.