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USA and China on collision course over fate of EP-3
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| 4 April 2001 |
By Martin Streetly,
Editor of Jane's Electronic Mission Aircraft
Following our initial report on the US surveillance aircraft currently in
Chinese hands following a mid-air collision (USA
and China wrangle over US 'spyplane'), photographs released by the Chinese
have confirmed that the aircraft in question, a US Navy EP-3E Aries II,
is aircraft PR-32 (the VQ-1 squadron code for the EP-3 bearing the service
serial number 156511).According to US Pacific Command, the EP-3E was intercepted by two Chinese fighters at around 09.15 hrs local time on Sunday 1 April. The US Navy aircraft came into 'contact' with one of the Chinese interceptors and was sufficiently damaged as to issue a 'Mayday' call and divert to Lingshui military airfield on Hainan island. Jane's sources suggest that the aircraft's 24-person crew was able to communicate that they had landed safely. A spokesman confirmed that while the US Navy has procedures to destroy sensitive equipment installed on board platforms such as the EP-3E, as of 3 April the service had no knowledge as to whether such procedures had been carried out.
Subsequent to the incident, leading figures in the Bush administration and US Pacific Command expressed concern that the aircraft's crew were being held incommunicado. They have demanded access to their nationals and the return of the aircraft as soon as possible. As of 05.30 hrs GMT on 3 April US sources were reporting that American diplomats had been allowed access to the crew and that they were all alive and well. Here it is perhaps worth noting that the aircraft's crew included one US Marine and a US Air Force officer.
By 07.30 hrs GMT on the same date, sources were reporting the US administration's belief that the Chinese had begun an examination of the aircraft. For their part, the Chinese blame the USA directly for the incident, which may well have resulted in the death of the Chinese pilot involved in the incident, Wang Wei. He is understood to have ejected but has not been found.
Chinese President Jiang Zemin is reported to have called for an end to US surveillance flights off China's Pacific coast and holds the USA 'fully responsible' for events: a claim that he believes China can back up with 'full evidence'. The US Navy, meanwhile, holds a different view: Commander-in-Chief of US Pacific Command Admiral Dennis Blair said at a press briefing on 1 April: "An EP-3 is about the size, of, say, a [Boeing] 737. It flies generally about 300 knots. The Chinese aircraft involved is . . . a fighter aircraft. It flies at about twice that speed . . . I don't think there's much question as to who has the impact under international airspace rules."
Intelligence windfalls
While US officials are making much of PR-32's 'sovereign immunity', there is a long tradition of technical examination of aeronautical 'prizes of war' stretching back to the 1940s, and it would be most surprising if the Chinese did not attempt a technical evaluation of the Hainan EP-3. Indeed, the USA itself has set many precedents for such action, the most spectacular of which was probably the US-Japanese examination of a Soviet MiG-25 fighter that defected to Japan on 6 September 1976. Despite repeated requests by the then Soviet government, the MiG was not returned for 67 days, by which time US personnel are reported (among other things) to have carried out high-speed taxi runs with it, removed and ground-tested its engines as well as operating the type's radar, identification friend-or-foe and datalink systems. In terms of the intelligence take available to the Chinese, Jane's analysis suggests that, while all the platform's onboard equipment will be of interest, the chief prize may be an insight into the way in which the aircraft's mission system processes and analyses collected data. More damaging would be the fact that this aircraft could be a 'Story Teller'-modified platform that features upgraded (compared with the baseline EP-3E Aries II) data comparison, correlation and reporting capabilities. While not confirmed as of this report, Jane's sources suggest that VQ-1 has two such aircraft currently on strength among its total of six, giving a one-in-three chance of the Hainan EP-3 housing the 'Story Teller' upgrade.
VQ-1
Established on 1 June 1955, Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron VQ-1 has, throughout its existence, been tasked with signals intelligence (SIGINT) work. Flying a succession of specialist aircraft types (in chronological order, the P4M-1Q Mercator, the EA-3B Skywarrior, the EC-121M Super Constellation, the EP-3B 'Batrack', the EP-3E 'Aries I/Deepwell' and, most recently, the EP-3E Aries II), the squadron was home-ported at Naval Air Station (NAS) Agana, Guam, for much of its operational life. It moved to its present location (NAS Whidbey Island, Washington State) as a result of the post-Cold War drawdown within the US military.
Over time, the squadron is also known to have operated forward detachments at naval air facilities at Atsugi (to 1991), Misawa in Japan and Kadena on Okinawa. VQ-1 was active during Operation 'Desert Storm' and has lost at least one aircraft (an EC-121M on 14 April 1969) to hostile action. In that incident, all 31 crewmen aboard the aircraft were killed.
As of mid-March 2001, VQ-1's EP-3E inventory was reported to comprise aircraft 156507 (coded PR-31), 156511 (PR-32), 156514 (PR-33), 156517 (PR-34), 156528 (PR-36) and 157318 (PR-35). Of these, Jane's sources suggest that at the time of the recent incident aircraft PR-32 and PR-34 were forward-deployed to Kadena, from where PR-32's 31 March sortie was launched.
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| Photos released by China of the EP-3 that made a forced landing at Lingshui, Hainan, clearly show damage to the nose section, No 1 engine propeller and gashes in the port wing, as the Chinese notations apparently highlight. Reports from Taiwan claim the surviving Chinese interceptor used warning shots from its 23mm cannon to force PR-32 to land on Hainan: an option the crew would not have readily chosen given the valuable nature of the aircraft's onboard equipment. (Photo credit: P A News) |