Adam L. Beberg writes:
> We all know that China already knows how the plane works, my roomie actually
> rode in one when he was in ROTC (he says it does in fact stear like a
> tanker, china hit it on purpose) so it's not like they are top secret, or
> even mildly secret anymore. Hell the plane probably has a "Made in china by
> child labor" tag on it somewhere.
They certainly know how the *plane* works --- it's a modified version
of the ancient Lockheed Electra airliner. But the electronic sensing
gizmos inside --- state-of-the-art SIGINT gear, according to this web
page on the EP-3E variant captured by China:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/systems/collect/ep-3.htm
are a different matter; that's the sort of stuff that the military
doesn't like noncitizens *looking* at, let alone taking a screwdriver
to.
We've sold them 707s, but that doesn't mean that we'd necessarily
want them taking their sweet time inspecting an AWACS built on *that*
airframe.
rst
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Apr 29 2001 - 20:25:28 PDT