Refusal of Chinese to supply
power
hampers assessment of EP-3E damage
By Lisa Burgess, Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON
— The Chinese navy refused to supply power to the contractors who are trying to
assess the air-worthiness of the Navy’s downed EP-3 surveillance aircraft, bringing
the team’s work to a halt on Thursday.
Chinese
officials allowed technicians from Lockheed Martin to make a visual inspection of the
aircraft’s exterior on Wednesday — the first time Beijing has permitted access
to the plane since the mid-air collision with a Chinese fighter jet April 1 that forced it
to make an emergency landing on China’s southern island of Hainan.
But when
the team returned to the aircraft on Thursday, expecting to put in a full day inspecting
the plane’s interior and flight systems, they found they could not proceed without a
power generator that was promised by the Chinese, said Rear Adm. Craig Quigley.
"The
[Chinese] navy was unwilling to provide power," Quigley said. "We’re not
sure how [the delivery of power] didn’t happen."
The
team’s assessment will try to determine whether the plane can be repaired and flown
off Hainan, where Beijing detained the aircraft’s 24-member crew for 12 days while
demanding a formal apology for the incident from the United States.
It took
negotiators another three weeks of intense talks before Beijing finally decided to let the
Lockheed Martin team inspect the EP-3.
"We
believed we had transmitted, through [Beijing’s] Ministry of Foreign Affairs, our
technical needs, particularly power," Quigley said. "We’re not sure why,
but for one reason or another, those needs did not get down" to the Chinese navy on
Hainan.
The
contractors did not bring their own generators because "there was no expectation that
the power we required would not be provided," Quigley said.
The
technicians spent Wednesday afternoon performing "a very brief inspection,"
Quigley said.
Although
the Chinese navy did not provide power Wednesday, none was expected, he said.
Wednesday
"was more of a prep day," Quigley said. "There was progress made … but
powering up the aircraft is absolutely essential. We were hopeful that [Thursday] would be
a full day to check out all the details."
With
Thursday’s efforts to board the plane a failure, officials from the U.S. Embassy in
Beijing, the U.S. Pacific Command, and the Navy spent Thursday night trying to ensure that
the contractor team would have the power it needs to complete its work on Friday.
If the team
has the necessary power supplies, it will require about "one full working day"
to gather enough information to assess the plane’s condition accurately, Quigley
said.
Meanwhile,
details of the technicians’ Wednesday findings are unavailable, Quigley said —
in part because the Chinese objected to the team’s secure communications systems and
forced them to be left aboard the chartered aircraft that brought the contractors to
Hainan.
"The
secure communications they brought were not acceptable for use by the Chinese,"
Quigley said. "They were left on the chartered plane, and there they will stay."
The team
also was forced to leave its Inmarsat — a non-secure satellite communications system
— on the chartered aircraft, Quigley said.
Without its
own equipment, any reports the assessment team makes back to the Pentagon must be made
within earshot, and possibly monitored electronically, by the Chinese.
"The
communications available to the team are nonsecure," Quigley said. "They will
choose their words carefully."
Rather than
risk giving too much information to the Chinese, the team will probably stop in Hawaii on
its way back to the United States and make a full report to the Pentagon of its findings.
"We’re
not getting the report in bits and pieces," Quigley said.
In addition
to the plane’s air-worthiness, the contractor’s report also will reveal whether
Chinese officials have removed sensitive electronic surveillance aircraft from the plane,
one of the most touchy issues surrounding the entire incident.
The $36
million EP-3E ARIES II, or Airborne Reconnaissance Integrated Electronic System II, is a
large, slow-moving aircraft equipped with latest technological spy equipment.
When the
aircraft’s pilot began emergency landing procedures, the crew activated a standard
plan to destroy or deactivate as much of the plane’s classified gear and sensitive
information as possible, said Pentagon officials.
How much of
the emergency destruction plan the crew was able to accomplish has never been publicly
revealed.
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