Aircrew under orders to destroy secret equipment on plane

Spy plane row: America vents fury at the People's Liberation Army for failing to release ultra-secret surveillance aircraft and 24-person crew

The crew of the crippled US EP-3 spy plane packed with millions of dollars of state-of-the-art surveillance technology, was trained to smash the equipment it they feared it would fall into the hands of the Chinese.

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The crew of the crippled US EP-3 spy plane packed with millions of dollars of state-of-the-art surveillance technology, was trained to smash the equipment it they feared it would fall into the hands of the Chinese.

Officials said yesterday that standard procedures would call on the crew to do everything they could to stop the electronic equipment being accessed. Whether they had been able to do this as the plane made its emergency approach towards Hainan Island was last night not clear.

As officials yesterday stressed their worries about the 24 crew, including three women, still being held by the Chinese, there was equal, perhaps even more concern, about the state-of-the-art technology being carried on the plane.

While it was fully expected the Navy personnel would be handed over to US officials in China, it seemed far less certain whether Beijing would heed demands to treat the EP-3 as "sovereign territory". US officials said yesterday Chinese officials had boarded the plane soon after it landed on Hainan Island, suggesting Beijing had ignored such requests.

Amid an atmosphere of growing concern in Washington, a Pentagon spokesman yesterday confirmed that it was standard practice for compromised military crews to destroy equipment they believed could be seized by a foreign government.

"It is a practice if it appears the plane may be going into an area where anything sensitive might be divulged," a spokesman told The Independent. "It depends on the environment. [The decision] would not be that of the plane's commander alone ­ he would probably need some input from further up the hierarchy."

The EP-3 has been described as one of the US military's most sensitive pieces of hardware. Powered by four turbo-prop engines, it is a mobile electronic eavesdropping machine, in this case used to gather information about Chinese missiles aimed at Taiwan as well as troop movements in and out of Hong Kong.

The EP-3 has been used to fly over the borders of China, Russia, and North Korea since the early Sixties. "There is a considerable amount of equipment on there that is, I would guess, superior to the Chinese military's," said Navy analyst and author Norman Polmar. "For them to obtain it would be a real intelligence gain and our loss."

Paul Beaver, of military analysts Jane's Information Group, said: "It's quite catastrophic if they have actually seized (the plane). We don't know what they've actually done yet. "It's catastrophic for the US if the Chinese have managed to gain access to the aircraft and if they've managed to obtain access to the computers and the hard disks.

"The Chinese will probably sell the information to the Russians, so it means everyone will have access to one of the most sophisticated intelligence-gathering airplanes in the world." Mr Beaver said standard operating procedure would call for the crew to destroy their computer hard drive and software to erase intelligence data if there was a danger that Chinese officials might gain access to the plane.

He said the plane might have a system for jettisoning sensitive computer parts into the water in case of trouble, but added that it would be difficult to destroy all the electronic hardware in a short time.

The US surveillance teams and are based on Whidbey Island, Washington. This flight took off from the US Kadena air base on the Japanese island of Okinawa, about 1,000 miles from Hainan Island. The mission was well within the range of the plane, which can fly more than 3,000 nautical miles and spend 12 hours in the air if required. Two sets of pilots are normally aboard.

Although this is the first EP-3 to have been seized, the high-altitude games involving the US and China is nothing new. Retired Navy Rear Admiral Eric McVadon, who flew similar missions for 25 years, told The Washington Post he had first been intercepted in 1962. "It's Cold War cat-and-mouse. There is an expectation that you will be intercepted on occasion and the Chinese, like the Soviets once did, are making it clear that they know that you're there and they're not helpless."