Both sides were criticized following the event; the Chinese for making a bluff which was called without any real concessions from the American side other than the "Letter of the two sorries", and the Americans first for being insensitive immediately after the event and later for issuing the letter rather than taking a harder line. 0000001142 00000 n
On April 1, Wei was at it again. In April 2001, just months before the 9/11 attacks gripped the nation, a U.S. Navy spy plane flying a routine reconnaissance mission over the South China Sea was struck by a Peoples Liberation Army fighter jet that veered aggressively close. For a U.S. EP-3 spy plane and two Chinese J-8 fighter jets, this kind of risk became all too clear on April 1st, 2001. The crew also had the names of intelligence personnel U.S. and foreign partners who werent on the plane, including several dozen employees of the NSA andNSGA Misawa. By signing up, I agree to receive emails from The Intercept and to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. Wikisource has original text related to this article. China also agreed to return the plane, but only on condition that it was dismantled first. They found the Chinese food unpalatable as it included fish heads, but this later improved. 0000002403 00000 n
This part of the South China Sea comprises part of the PRC's exclusive economic zone based on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Investigators uncovered a lot of surprises during their analysis of the incident. On the third pass, it collided with the larger aircraft. v9`x$4EU'32H eTx!||`tD)Tw747544Gv. Republican congressman Tom DeLay described the episode as "communist piracy" and Chinese demands for compensation as "the deluded daydreams of a despotic regime". [38] As of 2011, flights of US spy planes near the Chinese coastline continue as before the incident. All of this happened within the blink of an eye and quickly sent the EP-3 plummeting nearly straight down. So, as one might assume with this kind of regional dispute, the Hainan Island Incident was a big deal and really shouts WWIII spark. The plane plunged 14,000 feet while shaking violently. The mid-air collision killed the Chinese pilot, crippled the Navy plane, and forced it to make an emergency landing at a Chinese airfield, touching off a tense international showdown for nearly two weeks while China refused to release the two-dozen American crew members and damaged aircraft. And because the radome was gone, American pilot, Lt. Shane Osborn was left without altitude or airspeed data. 0000000016 00000 n
Based on a description in the Navy-NSA report, the briefcase was likely an aluminum CMS, or COMSEC box, which contained cryptographic keying material the planes navigator had stuffed into it before passing it to the crew member. They were first allowed to meet with the crew three days after the collision. When sitting at 20,000 feet above the Earth, problems or emergencies can become monumentally more dangerous and isolated. 0000005835 00000 n
The EP-3 was operating about 70 miles (110km) away from the PRC island province of Hainan, and about 100 miles (160km) away from the Chinese military installation in the Paracel Islands, when it was intercepted by two J-8 fighters. In their assessment, they praised Osborn and his flight crew for saving the lives of everyone on board as well as the $80 million aircraft. Sun, Wei; Starosta, William J. Bush. But it didnt describe how they should do this. [12], For the next 26minutes the crew of the EP-3 carried out an emergency plan which included destroying sensitive items on board the aircraft, such as electronic equipment related to intelligence gathering, documents and data. RELATED:These Experimental Military Planes Were Completely Terrifying To Fly. Kept under close guard, they were taken to a military barracks at Lingshui where they were interrogated for two nights before being moved to lodgings in Haikou, the provincial capital and largest city on the island. This claim cannot be verified as the flight data has never been released by the Chinese government. With wind roaring inside the cabin, warning lights flashing, and the plane plummeting, crew members struggled to communicate over the noise while donning parachutes, survival vests, and helmets. Were falling like a rock and everyone thought we were going to die, he recalled. The 24 crew members were detained and interrogated by the Chinese authorities until a statement was delivered by United States government regarding the incident. They gradually developed good relations with their guards, with one guard inquiring of them the lyrics for the song "Hotel California" by the Eagles. <<926068e2b7f0ab4cb78cee709ce87d41>]>>
An emergency action plan for landing in hostile territory directed crews to shred or jettison sensitive material and to destroy equipment with an ax. %%EOF
This made it difficult for them to ensure that everything got destroyed, and it meant that investigators had to rely on the recollections of crew members about what they had carried on the plane to determine what the Chinese might have seen. The J-8 struck the big EP-3 on its third pass, destroying the EP-3's radome (radar antenna dome) and critically damaging one of the propellers. One thing we do know, however, is that this definitely wouldn't have happened if the American crew was sitting inside an SR-71 Blackbird. He grew up with old American cars and turned into an omnivore of sorts. Who would hold party elites accountable to the values they proclaim to have? In May 2016, another close encounter occurred between China and the U.S. when two Chinese J-11 tactical planes flewdangerously close to an EP-3E. Aircrew of the US EP-3 line-up along a red brick walkway upon arrival 12 April 2001 at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii. 1 (outer left) propeller was severely damaged. xref
The investigators deemed this a serious compromise, since it could prompt China to alter its methods. [7] This sea area includes the South China Sea Islands, which are claimed by the PRC and several other countries. For more than a decade, U.S. officials have refused to say what secrets China might have gleaned from the plane. Flight path of the turboprop EP-3E Aries involved in the crash. As a result, the crew didnt know hard drives should be destroyed in a special manner to prevent data recovery. [35][36], The incident took place ten weeks after the inauguration of George W. Bush as president and was his first foreign policy crisis. [8], Area of the collision in the South China Sea, The impact sent the EP-3 into a 30 dive at a bank angle of 130, almost inverted. Jeffrey Richelson, author of a number of books on the intelligence community and a senior fellow with the National Security Archive, is one person who has sought for years to uncover more information about the incident. They also took cassette tapes containing intercepted data and stretched them until they tore. The spy plane involved in the 2001 collision was one of 11 such aircraft the U.S. used to fill critical intelligence gaps left by satellites. The J-8's tail fin struck the EP-3's left aileron forcing it fully upright, and causing the U.S. plane to roll to the left at 3-4 times its normal maximum rate. As Osborn, the pilot, tried to regain control of the aircraft, he ordered everyone to prepare to bail. Then he tried a third time. Issued by the NSA director, the directives lay out policy for SIGINT activities, and some of these included detailed instructions for collecting, processing, and distributing intercepts. There, investigators began the process of determining what intelligence might have been lost. Upon impact, it broke into two complete pieces, leaving Wei with no chance of recovery or safe landing. Honeck and Vignery worked up humorous routines based on the television shows The People's Court, Saturday Night Live and The Crocodile Hunter. It took until November 2014 for the U.S. and China to finally adopt a memorandum to regulate the safety of air and maritime encounters, after a dangerous near-miss event occurred in August that year between a Chinese fighter jet and a U.S. Navy P-8 anti-submarine warfare aircraft. The military implemented a number of measures to better protect data and equipment on spy planes and to improve crew training. I had no flaps [to slow the plane], instruments were out, and I was overweight for a normal landing by 30,000 pounds [due to the fuel]. Only one member of the crew had ever participated in an in-flight emergency destruction drill. Although the U.S. had an agreement with Moscow about what American crews should do if they had to make an emergency detour into Russian territory including which radio frequencies and call signs to use there was no agreement or guidance for China, investigators noted in the report. He would get so close to the plane that you could literally jump from one wingtip to another wingtip, he told The Intercept. The concern about the exposed crypto material wasnt that China could use the keys to decrypt that days U.S. communications, but that it provided insight into U.S. cryptologic methods. 0000003452 00000 n
), The crew of the EP-3 was released on April 11, 2001, and returned to their base at Whidbey Island via Honolulu, Hawaii, where they were subject to two days of intense debriefings, followed by a hero's welcome. The plane also had a number of cryptographic voice and data devices onboard for securing communication and data transmissions between the plane and home base that didnt get destroyed, although the crew managed to zero-out the memory on them. But the information the investigators considered the most sensitive on the plane were the tasking instructions for collecting data from China. They didnt seem too worried about it, however; they were confident that if China did employ new countermeasures, the U.S. could overcome them with a little work. Following the collision, the failure of the nose cone had disabled the No. This claim cannot be verified since the Chinese government refuses to release data from the black boxes of either plane, both of which are in its possession. The exposure, investigators worried, could have an adverse impact on future assignments and travel plans for affected personnel. [34], In addition to paying for the dismantling and shipping of the EP-3, the United States paid for the 11days of food and lodging supplied by the Chinese government to the aircraft's crew, in the amount of $34,000. The other J-8 that accompanied Wei's fighter jet landed at the same airfield several minutes before the EP-3. One of the fighter jets approached from the rear left and stopped 10 feet away from the spy planes wing. Healey said he was not surprised by the overall assessment of the intelligence losses, since he doesnt think China learned very much it didnt already know about what the planes were collecting. xb```, cb0D$YLf2+ [6] As early as May 22, 1951, Hainan was targeted at the behest of U.S. It landed at 170 knots (200mph), with no flaps, no trim, and a damaged left elevator, weighing 108,000 pounds (49,000kg). Military Wiki is a FANDOM Lifestyle Community. There are worst-case fears of what a compromise might bring, and then the actual reality of what it does bring in the future, he noted. The unredacted Navy report, supplemented by a 2001 Congressional Research Service summary of the incident, as well as The Intercepts interviews with two crew members on board during the collision, presents the most detailed picture yet of the P-3 incident, a critical moment in U.S.-China military relations. He has been a daily automotive journalist for quite some time and specialized in Porsches, but don't let that fool you. Instead, they deemed the losses medium-to-low in severity. The data included names, addresses, social security numbers, and a description of official duties for U.S. personnel. 0000004522 00000 n
Wang Wei, was posthumously honored in China as a "Guardian of Territorial Airspace and Waters". Jason Healey, a former signals intelligence officer who worked with reconnaissance aircraft in the Air Force and is now a senior research scholar at Columbia Universitys School of International and Public Affairs, said this could have potentially helped the Chinese understand U.S. decryption capabilities. Based on the account of Wang Wei's wingman, the Chinese government stated that the American plane "veered at a wide angle towards the Chinese", in the process ramming the J-8. Once I thought the airplane could make it [to nearby land], that was what we needed to do.. But 16 cryptographic keys, other codebooks and laptops, and a large computer for processing signals intelligence remained on board. Why Kiefer Sutherland Quickly Got Rid Of His 1967 Ford Mustang, Here's Everything You Should Know About The Hainan Island Incident, the U.S. routinely carries out missions of intelligence and other patrols in the area, These Experimental Military Planes Were Completely Terrifying To Fly, This Is Why The A-10 Warthog Is One Of The Scariest Military Planes, Pilot Shane Osborn was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, What Really Happened To Upholstery Queen, Sue From Fast N' Loud, Watch The Ford Bronco And Jeep Wrangler 392 Take On The Moab Desert, Abandoned 1959 BMW Isetta Revived With Beautiful Patina Has Us Excited, Roaming The Earth With Jay Leno In A Ford F-550, This Is The Simplest Way To Hotwire A Car, Here's What We Love About The Mercedes-Benz GLB SUV, 5 Collector's Cars To Buy Before It's Too Late, This Chevrolet IROC-S10 Could Have Rivaled The GMC Syclone, The 1300-HP Mercury Comet Gruesome Crash Was A Result Of A Botch, Heres What Made The Bugatti Veyron So Special, Check Out Constance Nunes Very Pink Ford Mustang, EXCLUSIVE: A New 4Runner Concept Gives Us Hope For The Next Generation, Forgotten Gem: A Look Back At The Ferrari 288 GTO And What Made It So Special, Heres How To Hand-Wash Your Car Like A Pro, Here's How The Hennessey Venom F5 Achieves Its Insane Top Speed, How The Lockheed C-5 Galaxy Became An Airforce Giant, What You Didnt Know About The Vagos Motorcycle Club. p. 63. Airspeed and altitude data were lost, the aircraft depressurized, and an antenna became wrapped around the tailplane. Wang Wei made two close passes of the EP-3 aircraft, and on the third pass, cut it a little too close. How many covert wars, miscarriages of justice, and dystopian technologies would remain hidden if our reporters werent on the beat? Osborn kept the engines running while the crew dashed off one last message to the Pacific Reconnaissance Operations Center: They had landed safely. And in one of the systems for collecting communications, the crew had also inadvertently left behind a tape that contained 45 minutes of encrypted and decrypted Chinese naval communications. But the fact that this mid-air crash happened in an area of high military importance makes its ambiguity all the more believable. This meant the crew had about 20 minutes remaining to accomplish everything they needed before they were on the ground. The computer contained detailed information for processing more than two-dozen PROFORMA communications for North Korea, Russia, Vietnam, China, and U.S. allies. RELATED:This Is Why The A-10 Warthog Is One Of The Scariest Military Planes. In addition to this, the crew had a manual onboard that provided a comprehensive overview of how the U.S. exploits signals and nearly two dozen U.S. The plane also had information about the emitter parameters for allied weapon systems, and the names and locations of radar sites around the world and the radar systems installed at each information China could use to exploit the systems. But there was one caveat: without a complete inventory of all the classified data that was on the plane and potentially exposed to China, their assessment was inevitably incomplete. The 24 American crew members were taken to a nearby holding area in Haikou, where they would be interrogated for ten days by Chinese soldiers. The only option, given that it wasnt clear how long the plane would hold, was the PLAs nearby Lingshui air base on Hainan Island. Map: Navy-NSA final report on the EP-3 Collision. 106 17
The EP-3 wasn't completely destroyed due to its size, but make no mistake; the EP-3 was no "ROC", it was still vulnerable to accidents like this. After returning to U.S. soil, the pilot of the EP-3, Lt. Shane Osborn, was allowed to make a brief statement in which he said that the EP-3 was on autopilot and in straight-and-level flight at the time of the collision. They were treated well in general, but were interrogated at all hours, and so suffered from lack of sleep. The crew managed to jettison some cryptographic keying material, as well as codebooks and two laptops out the emergency hatch. Its pilot, Wang Wei, saluted the American crew, then fell back 100 feet. After a collision with a U.S. Navy surveillance plane on April 1, 2001 Chinese officials reported that Wang parachuted out of his F-8 fighter over the South China Sea and is presumed dead. One of the systems was used for processing what are known as PROFORMA communications. While using it to bash equipment, the report notes, the box sprung open, scattering its classified contents around the plane. After eleven days and extensive pressure from the U.S., China released the crew. During one such incident, he was shown approaching so close that his e-mail address could be read from a sign that he was holding up. startxref
We had screwed up the inside of that plane as much as we could.. The 117-page report, prepared by a team of investigators from the Navy and NSA, is based on interviews conducted with the crew right after their release from China and on physical re-enactments of their destruction methods in some cases recreated with scientific precision to determine how effective the methods might have been in preventing the Chinese from gleaning secrets. A PRC Su-27 force is based at Hainan. The aircraft left Okinawa early in the morning with a mission to monitor Chinese communications as well as radar and weapon-systems signals. On this approach, however, he maneuvered too close to the plane and got sucked in by one of the EP-3Es propellers. Stamford, Lincolnshire: Key Publishing. Photo: Navy-NSA final report on the EP-3 Collision. [37], Following the collision, China's monitoring of reconnaissance flights became less aggressive. Naval Intelligence for RAF photo-reconnaissance overflights, using Spitfire PR Mk 19s based at Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong. Despite the wealth of data and equipment that was exposed in the incident, the investigators ultimately concluded that the intelligence losses were not catastrophic. Because the crew didnt have a shredder onboard, they tore paper materials by hand and scattered the pieces throughout the plane, hoping the Chinese wouldnt be able to reconstitute them. The kind of reporting we do is essential to democracy, but it is not easy, cheap, or profitable. By the time we landed, the plane was in total disrepair. Attempts by journalists and academics to learn more over the years have been unsuccessful. 
The plane was already nearing the end of its outbound leg and preparing to head back to base, so the pilots initiated an early turnaround with the plane in autopilot for the trip home. [26], The "Letter of the two sorries"[27] was the letter delivered by the United States Ambassador Joseph Prueher to Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan of the People's Republic of China to defuse the incident. The airplane was coming apart. Osborn saidhe and other members of the flight crew were interrogated daily, and the Chinese told Osborn that theyd be thrown into prison indefinitely if he didnt allow the reconnaissance crew to be questioned as well. But China said the U.S. wasencroaching its sovereign airspace. %PDF-1.2
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The J-8 broke into two pieces, while the EP-3's radome detached completely and its No. But now, a comprehensive Navy-NSA report completed three months after the collision, and included among documents obtained by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013, finally reveals extensive details about the incident, the actions crew members took to destroy equipment and data, and the secrets that wereexposed to China which turned out to be substantialthough not catastrophic. The American crew's mission was to gain satellite intelligence on classified matters, so landing at a random airfield with a damaged plane is an obvious security risk. At about 09:15 local time, toward the end of the EP-3's six-hour ELINT mission, two Chinese J-8s from Lingshui airfield, on the Chinese island of Hainan, approached the EP-3 as it flew at 22,000 feet (6,700m) and 180 knots (210mph), on a heading of 110, about 70 miles (110km) away from the island. 0000005637 00000 n
"[4] The PRC interprets the Convention as allowing it to preclude other nations' military operations within this area, while the United States maintains that the Convention grants free navigation for all countries' aircraft and ships, including military aircraft and ships, within a country's exclusive economic zone. Instead the crew improvised by dropping laptops on the floor, stomping on them, bashing them against a desk, and bending them across a chair all methods that would have been insufficient to ensure the Chinese could not recover data from them. They could be maneuvered more easily to get closer and better signals reception, and their conspicuous presence spurred targeted militaries to react, thereby creating more communications to be intercepted. He was flying one of the crown jewels of the reconnaissance force, Capt. Wei was particularly aggressive, recalled one crew member who was on the plane but asked to remain anonymous because hes not authorized to discuss the incident. Jan van Tol, a retired Navy officer and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, told the Omaha World-Herald. Although the PRC probably believed that the U.S. possessed this information it was probably not aware that the information could be derived from SIGINT collection and analysis, the investigators wrote. Kim Zetter[emailprotected]gmail.com@kimzetter. After being released from Haikou, the crew members got a hero's welcome at their base in Honolulu, Hawaii, followed by several days of intense debriefing. He writes that shortly after Barack Obama was elected president that year, the NSA picked up a barrage of intercepts from the Chinese that were intercepts of U.S. communications. 0000005797 00000 n
Asked whether he stood by that comment today, van Tol told The Intercept that hes hesitant to question the judgment of a pilot who was on the scene and understood the conditions better than he does, but he still feels Osborn had an obligation to better safeguard the aircrafts secrets. 1 propeller could not be feathered, leading to increased drag on that side. On April 1st, 2001, the American military aircraft EP-3 we mentioned took off from its base in Okinawa, Japan, and set off for a six-hour signal intelligence mission over the South China Sea. We were totally underprepared for it.. The equipment we had on that plane was old and outdated and a lot of it didnt work properly, he said. These were performed as they went to meals, the only time they were together. Lt. Cdr. [Wei] was extra crazy. Luckily, at the time the report was written, three months after the collision, the U.S. had not yet detected any alterations in Chinas communication habits or methods. Illustration: Justin Renteria for The Intercept, Navy-NSA final report on the EP-3 Collision. The spy planes generally carried a crew of linguists, cryptographers, and technicians, and the one flying over the South China Sea that day carried an eighteen-member reconnaissance team from the Navy, Marines, and Air Force, in addition to the six-member flight crew. But it only recently addressed another issue around the incident the lack of an agreement with China about how to handle aircraft interactions in the region. 0
As the crew did their best to destroy the material, Osborn prepared to land on Hainan Island. I was bashing in computer screens. Shrapnel from the F-8 flew through the spy planes fuselage and into the nose cone, shearing it off, and damaged the spy planes radome a dome that protects radar equipment two propellers, and an engine. [31], By April 15, 2001 an online memorial database was created at 
"[29], There was further debate over the exact meaning of the Chinese translation issued by the U.S. Embassy. Photo: Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co.,HO/AP Photo. And although they found fault with the crews demolition efforts and with supervisors onboard who failed to effectively coordinate and communicate with crew members during the incident, they mostly blamed the military for failing to properly prepare officers and crew for such an event. As for the signals collection equipment, they destroyed the display terminals and controls but not the tuners and signals-processors, the most critical parts of the systems. June 2001. p. 79. That wasnt the case with the spy plane, which carried a trove of surveillance equipment and classified signals intelligence data. The Intercept is an independent nonprofit news outlet. About ten minutes later, two Chinese F-8 fighter jets appeared in the sky about a mile away. The destruction efforts began once Osborn made the decision to land the plane, saidthe crew member. Reliable sources have speculated that the crew were only partially successful in their destruction of the on-board data and technology, although no official information has been released. As for materials and equipment that were critical to the crews mission, the plane had six carry-on computers, two of which were the most sensitive systems onboard. The plane did have a fire ax for breaking through the bulkhead in an emergency evacuation, but the blade was too dull and the handle too shortto be wielded effectively for destroying equipment. Military trucks met the spy plane on the ground, and steered it to the runways end where two-dozen Chinese soldiers surrounded the plane. The collision sliced the F-8 in half. Another stumbling block? [8], The EP-3 (BuNo 156511), assigned to Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron One (VQ-1, "World Watchers"), had taken off as MissionPR32 from Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan. One of the J-8s (81192), piloted by Lt. Cdr. Although other planes in the militarys spy fleet had recently undergone a major surveillance equipment upgrade, according to Osborn, their plane was still two weeks away from getting one. Guards gave them decks of cards and an English-language newspaper. These revealed information such as what data the U.S. was interested in collecting and the frequencies and call signs China used for its data. The only problem was, they didnt have a clue what they needed to do. Its possible the assessment of the investigators did later change. Although the latter wasnt a great distance, it would have been the less attractive option to the crew, according to Osborn, given the shaky condition of the aircraft and their loss of critical flight instruments and altitude from the collision. List of currently active United States military land vehicles, United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Seaboard World Airlines Flight 253 (1968). 0000004763 00000 n
He stated that he was just "guarding the autopilot" in his interview with Frontline. It is one of the most strategically sensitive areas in the world. "Culture and apology: The Hainan Island incident". [5] The island also houses a large signals intelligence facility which tracks U.S. activity in the area and monitors traffic from commercial communications satellites. The exact phrasing of this document was intentionally ambiguous and allowed both countries to save face while simultaneously defusing a potentially volatile situation between militarily strong regional states.[1][2]. China could also share the information with North Korea, Cuba, and Russia to help them do the same. The PRC is a signatory to this Convention and while the United States is not, according to naval officials it "operate[s]within the provisions of the Law of the Sea Convention in every area related to navigation".
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