{"id":6060,"date":"2010-10-26T12:30:00","date_gmt":"2010-10-26T16:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=6060"},"modified":"2013-06-07T08:19:14","modified_gmt":"2013-06-07T13:19:14","slug":"the-intelligence-bonanza-of-the-2001-american-ep-3e-incident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/10\/26\/the-intelligence-bonanza-of-the-2001-american-ep-3e-incident\/","title":{"rendered":"The intelligence bonanza of the 2001 American EP-3E incident"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you cast your mind back far enough, you’ll remember the political impact of the mid-air collision between a Chinese fighter and an American EP-3E electronic surveillance aircraft. It certainly had the potential to turn into a major standoff between the two powers, but apparently the real story<\/a> was the intelligence breach following the emergency landing:<\/p>\n

\n

On April 1, 2001, an American EP-3E Aries II reconnaissance plane on an eavesdropping mission collided with a Chinese interceptor jet over the South China Sea, triggering the first international crisis of George W. Bush\u2019s Administration. The Chinese jet crashed, and its pilot was killed, but the pilot of the American aircraft, Navy Lieutenant Shane Osborn, managed to make an emergency landing at a Chinese F-8 fighter base on Hainan Island, fifteen miles from the mainland. Osborn later published a memoir, in which he described the \u201cincessant jackhammer vibration\u201d as the plane fell eight thousand feet in thirty seconds, before he regained control.<\/p>\n

The plane carried twenty-four officers and enlisted men and women attached to the Naval Security Group Command, a field component of the National Security Agency. They were repatriated after eleven days; the plane stayed behind. The Pentagon told the press that the crew had followed its protocol, which called for the use of a fire axe, and even hot coffee, to disable the plane\u2019s equipment and software. These included an operating system created and controlled by the N.S.A., and the drivers needed to monitor encrypted Chinese radar, voice, and electronic communications. It was more than two years before the Navy acknowledged that things had not gone so well. \u201cCompromise by the People\u2019s Republic of China of undestroyed classified material . . . is highly probable and cannot be ruled out,\u201d a Navy report issued in September, 2003, said.<\/p>\n

The loss was even more devastating than the 2003 report suggested, and its dimensions have still not been fully revealed. Retired Rear Admiral Eric McVadon, who flew patrols off the coast of Russia and served as a defense attach\u00e9 in Beijing, told me that the radio reports from the aircraft indicated that essential electronic gear had been dealt with. He said that the crew of the EP-3E managed to erase the hard drive — \u201czeroed it out\u201d — but did not destroy the hardware, which left data retrievable: \u201cNo one took a hammer.\u201d Worse, the electronics had recently been upgraded. \u201cSome might think it would not turn out as badly as it did, but I sat in some meetings about the intelligence cost,\u201d McVadon said. \u201cIt was grim.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

H\/T to Bruce Schneier<\/a> for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you cast your mind back far enough, you’ll remember the political impact of the mid-air collision between a Chinese fighter and an American EP-3E electronic surveillance aircraft. It certainly had the potential to turn into a major standoff between the two powers, but apparently the real story was the intelligence breach following the emergency […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,5,13],"tags":[123,145,189,476,156,913],"class_list":["post-6060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-military","category-usa","tag-aircraft","tag-airforce","tag-cyberwar","tag-espionage","tag-fail","tag-nsa"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1zK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6060"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20579,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6060\/revisions\/20579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}