China, Many Nations Fly Spy Planes

April 5, 2001 -- China may be demanding that the United States stop flying surveillance aircraft off its coast, but it also flies planes performing similar missions, as do some two dozen other countries.

The United States has the world's largest and most capable force of spy planes — formally known as signals intelligence, or SIGINT aircraft — like the EP-3E Aries II plane being held by China. It flew SIGINT aircraft throughout the Cold War, and the Air Force, Navy and Army operate at least several dozen such aircraft designed for gathering the electronic communications and emissions of the militaries of potential foreign adversaries.

But China, too, is known to have a comparable, though much smaller and less advanced, capability, according to unclassified research on the subject. China's military is suspected of flying an unknown number of Russian-designed Antanov An-12 transport aircraft equipped with signals intelligence equipment, says Martin Streetly, editor of Jane's Electronic Mission Aircraft.

China is also believed to have equipped a number of other aircraft with SIGINT capabilities, including long range Tu-154Ms and PS-5s and HZ-5s, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies' [IISS] authoritative annual publication, The Military Balance. And China is believed to be mining the downed U.S. EP-3E for its advanced SIGINT technologies.

But that represents only a fraction of China's capability. China is also believed to have a large number of ground stations, ships and submarines, trucks, and limited satellite capabilities dedicated to SIGINT collection.

"China maintains by far the most extensive signals intelligence capabilities of all the countries in the Asia/Pacific region," Professor Desmond Ball of Australian National University wrote in a detailed article on the subject in 1995.

Growing Interest

Some two dozen countries worldwide fly similar aircraft, and the number of countries has been growing over the past decade. Most modern air forces have them and many developing nations fly the planes. In East Asia, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore, possibly Russia, and Australia, as well as Chinese and U.S. forces, are believed to have them.

"There's a lot of people doing it around the world," says Andrew Brookes, of IISS. "It's not just the big players. You know, anybody whose got a neighbor who they're worried about is listening on what that neighbor's doing."

The aircraft are used so extensively, says Streetly, "I'll bet there has been a signals intelligence aircraft up, somewhere in the world, every day since 1948."

An important reason for the increased interest, he says, is that technological improvements in recent decades have allowed air forces to greatly increase the types of intelligence they can collect, analyze and distribute from the air. Over the past decade in particular, modern communications and computers have enabled the planes to receive, process, analyze and transport massive amounts of data in real time.

The planes are no longer used mainly for "head counting" enemy radar, as they were by the United States early in the Cold War. They have become a very mobile way of gathering a variety of information, which can provide insights into a potential adversary's weapons systems, defenses, and strategies and intentions.

Another important reason for the interest, says Streetly, is the growing recognition that the planes can be a very useful, real-time intelligence-delivering tool during conflict, as was illustrated during the Vietnam and Gulf wars.

Also, SIGINT aircraft have become useful for nontraditional military operations, including the war on drugs. A P-3 eavesdropping plane reportedly helped track down the elusive Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar in the early 1990s. The U.S. Customs Service has at least four P-3 aircraft performing anti-narcotics missions.

Experts say SIGINT aircraft offer some important advantages over other types of collection. For instance, they can provide greater mobility than satellites or land-based systems. And they can pick up higher-frequency transmissions at a greater distance than ships, because at higher altitudes they are in a direct line of sight with a larger area.

"They are really the crown jewels," says Streetly.

China’s Many Capabilities

China does not appear to rely as much on aircraft for surveillance as the United States. One reason may be China lacks forward bases for conducting missions at great distances from the mainland, such as near the U.S. mainland, or even Hawaii.

"I think their application of airborne SIGINT has been limited simply by the limited reach of the Chinese military generally," says John Pike of the Web site GlobalSecurity.org. "It is basically sort of not much more than a brown water Navy, in the process of becoming a green water Navy."

But China's military focus is much closer to its shores anyway, experts say.

China set up ground signals intelligence stations in its eastern provinces in the 1950s to monitor signals from Taiwan and from U.S. forces stationed in South Korea and Japan, according to Ball. Additional stations were built in the 1960s in the north and west to monitor the Soviet Union. And stations reportedly have been set up to monitor South and Southeast Asia as well.

There is believed to be a large SIGINT complex on Hainan Island — where the U.S. aircraft is being held — that has been mainly concerned with monitoring the South China Sea and the Philippines, especially when the U.S. bases there were operational, according to Ball. During the 1980s, the United States helped China set up data collecting points along the Soviet border, wrote Ball.

In general, China tends to rely more heavily on the use of ground stations and ships, experts say.