"Paul J. Adam" wrote in message
...
In message , Dave Kearton
writes
IMHO Lt Osborn made all the right decisions under very trying
circumstances. He kept the plane aloft, long enough for all the sensitive
gear to be destroyed, he KEPT HIS CREW ALIVE and what was left of the
plane was flown back to the US after the Chinese were done with it.

If you think worst-case, ditching or baling out offers the Chinese a nasty
option. "We picked up nine of the crew, here they are. Mission Supervisor
Snuffy, who knows all about what the aircraft can do and what its mission
was? No, haven't found a trace of him, but we're still searching..." And
who's to know different? Once the crew lose sight of each other, there's
no way to know whether Supervisor Snuffy died during the bailout, drowned
in the ocean, is on a slow fishing boat with no comms on his way to port,
or is being forcibly persuaded to be detailed and explicit about EP-3
capabilities in a Beijing basement.

Once the hard discs, memory cards, crypto modules, whatever have been
dealt with, the EP-3 is an elderly turboprop with a lot of radio receivers
feeding to dead systems. Not a lot of genuine intel value the it's an
ELINT platform, gee whiz, who knew?

The crew are the real prize which could compromise the capability: keeping
them together, alive, and getting them all home protects the most
important asset.

Who cares what the Chinese would see on the plane, they would get that
hardware via other means anyway.

A cynical part of me wonders how much of the hardware is "Made in China"
anyway. Radio receivers aren't exactly new or secret, it's what they feed,
what you can achieve with them and what you were sent to get that matter.

--
He thinks too much, such men are dangerous.

Paul J. Adam





Just parenthetical to all of this, I showed up in Beijing the day after the
incident.


My trip was booked for weeks beforehand, but my engineer and I showed up at
the airport, on 28-day tourist visas with bags full of electronics to work
at the Australian Embassy.


It's a lot more pedestrian than it sounds, but we sailed through customs and
immigration at the airport. During our routine briefing, the security
officer at the embassy told us that the Chinese _knew_ we were spooks. (NO -
we weren't, but that didn't matter) The Chinese didn't care, as long
as they knew what we were up to and what we found out while we were there.
It's only if there is some doubt on this last part that we'd be detained at
the airport - at the end of our 28 days - by the guy with the rubber gloves.


It was a time of slightly elevated tension between the US and China and the
internal security crowd were working overtime on 'visitors' who pretended to
be tourists. We were followed, tailed, politely questioned by locals
and my hotel room was bugged.

Apart from all that, China's a lovely country and we got lots of work
done.....





--



Cheers

Dave Kearton