By Tony Capaccio

Washington, April 3 (Bloomberg) -- China's access to a U.S. Navy spy plane could improve its electronic warfare capabilities but is unlikely to be a major intelligence loss, according to military analysts.

The EP-3 Aries ``signals intelligence'' aircraft is packed with electronics to intercept and analyze conversations and the electronic characteristics of military radar. The most sensitive information is U.S. encryption codes used in transmitting and receiving data, and the plane's crew would destroy those first, analysts said.

There are unconfirmed reports that Chinese officials boarded the aircraft and took off equipment. Whatever they may have gotten is a tolerable loss, analysts said.

``So much has been declassified that it's highly unlikely there would be something approaching a major intelligence coup,'' said Charles Ward, an electronic warfare expert with the U.S. General Accounting Office.

``It's not like they walked off with our most advanced signals intelligence satellite,'' said Jeffery Richelson, author of the ``The U.S. Intelligence Community,'' now in its fourth printing.

The plane landed Sunday on Hainan Island after a collision with a Chinese jet fighter. China has given no assurance that the U.S. will have access to the plane or that the plane will be returned. Rather, the Chinese government insists it has the right to inspect the aircraft's electronic surveillance equipment.

`12-Hour Missions'

The four-engine turboprop can fly 12-hour patrols at altitudes of up to 28,000 feet. It has a one-way range of about 4,080 miles. The planes have flown missions and patrols in numerous locations such as over Kuwait, Iraq, Bosnia, the Gulf of Oman, South China Sea. Luzon Strait and Gulf of Thailand.

``The plane itself is old but it has some pretty good technology that's used in other aircraft,'' said Mark Cowell, an electronic warfare expert with Forecast International, a defense marketing analysis firm. `` But this more of a gain for the Chinese rather than a loss for the U.S. It's something the U.S. can recover quickly from.''

The Navy plans to replace the Lockheed Martin Corp.-built EP- 3 and is evaluating a Boeing Co. proposal to build a new version based on a 737 airframe, Ward said.

`Emergency Destruction'

The EP-3's equipment ``is not material, capabilities and limitations that we would like to share with others, so yes, we are concerned,'' Rear Admiral Craiq Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters.

``We don't know how much of an emergency destruction procedure (the crew) may have carried out in the time that they had. Having fully functioning equipment is one thing; having destroyed or at least partially destroyed equipment is a different issue,'' he said.

EP-3 crews, like those of other intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft, regularly practice destroying sensitive equipment and codes, he said.

``You disable it in a variety of ways, whether it's physical destruction, whether it's electronic `zeroing' of equipment, whether it's the shredding of classified papers,'' Quigley said.

The crew would first destroy the encryption gear, Ward said. ``That's important because you wouldn't want the Chinese to have the opportunity to break our communications codes.''

Next would come databases, tapes or discs on which radar emissions are recorded, he said. The crew had about 20 minutes from the time the aircraft collided with a Chinese F-8 fighter to when it landed on Hainan Island.

Depending how much equipment and codes the crew destroyed, ``it could be a major headache,'' said Ken Sherman, a former Navy electronic warfare specialist and now an editor of the Journal of Electronic Defense. ``It's nothing we can't recover from but it will cost money and take time to replace what was compromised.''

The EP-3 is one of the U.S.'s most highly classified aircraft, with 24-hour armed guards when on the ground, Sherman said. Even a cursory look at the aircraft's cockpit displays and circuitry would give China a sense of U.S. intercept capabilities, he said.

China's Capabilities

China lacks the ability to conduct sustained electronic warfare, according to a Pentagon report issued last year.

``The inventory of Chinese electronic warfare equipment includes a combination of 1950s-1980s technologies, with only a few select military units receiving the most modern components,'' said the Pentagon.

``China's electronic warfare efforts continue to focus on technology development and design capabilities improvement, accomplished mainly through cooperation with Western companies, through reverse engineering or through the procurement of foreign systems,'' the report said.

`Reverse Engineering'

China could gain a long-term boost to its intelligence capability if it had time to pick apart the aircraft, said Christopher Bolkcom, an electronic warfare aircraft analyst with the Congressional Research Service.

China's technicians are expert at taking the components of a dismantled system and -- without blueprints or design specs -- ``reverse engineering'' it to their own standards, Bolkcom said.

Much of China's anti-ship cruise missile program, for example, is based on its technicians dismantling U.S. decoy drones shot down during the Vietnam War, he said.

``I don't believe we will see a huge leap ahead in China's signals intelligence capability tomorrow, but if you believe the cruise missile program is a good analogy, there is a potential this could help them,'' Bolkcom said.

-- Anonymous, April 03, 2001

Answers

Heard one expert on CNN tonight basically saying the hardware was no big deal, it was old and nothing really special. It was the software and it's ability to interpret the signals that was the key asset, plus the data that had been collected showing the Chinese what of their countermeasures worked, and what didn't.... so the job to destroy the really important stuff was not that big a deal in the time they had.

Besides, this was NOT the latest and greatest we have... you don't send an irreplacable asset into an environment where you know there is a risk of loss to hostile forces, not during "peacetime"...

I smell a lot of disinfo going on here... we know how to play poker... why the plane chose to land on the island makes me suspicious. That plane is very capable of a reasonably safe ditch at sea, and we had ships close by...

-- Anonymous, April 03, 2001

You would (hopefully) think that they relayed any information that they gathered to the ships before they landed.

From what I gather, it isn't so much what was on the inside of the plane, but rather the outside of the plane that they could gather the information.

The picture that you see of the plane with the nose off, well that doesn't look like it was torn off. It lookes like it was unbolted and removed on purpose. It may have been damaged, but it wouldn't fall off perfect like that. There is some very sensitive equipment there that the crew may not have had access to. The configuration of the antena would also tell alot.

-- Anonymous, April 03, 2001

Yup, first thing that struck me was the nose had been removed. Here's a whole plane:

Compare to noseless plane:

-- Anonymous, April 03, 2001

Are you sure that is a photo of the actual plane on the ground in China? It could also be just a file photo of one of the same type planes with the radome off it. The nose cone comes off very easily in order to work on the radar antennae behind it. I doubt there is anything very important behind the radome. But, that bulge under the front of the fuselage is where the more exotic sensors are located.

-- Anonymous, April 04, 2001

According to this report

the nose cone came off due to the collision.

-- Anonymous, April 05, 2001