The EP-3 spy plane that collided with a Chinese jet fighter last week was monitoring the capabilities of China's Russian made Sovremenny-class destroyer, a leading Washington-based expert on the Chinese military says.
The spy plane was observing a Chinese naval exercise in the South China Sea, which was aimed at gauging how the PLA could integrate the Sovremenny and other new technologies into its existing naval operations, said Richard Fisher, a senior fellow at the think-tank the Jamestown Foundation.
The information the EP-3 gleaned -- if it had not made the emergency landing on Hainan -- would likely have been shared with Taiwan's military as it assesses the capacity of the Sovremennys, which made their debut in the Taiwan Strait last year.
"We primarily collect information for ourselves," Fisher said, basing his information on both press reports and his own sources.
However, with Washington and Taipei sharing intelligence information, "one could conjecture that if there was interesting information pertaining to Taiwan's ability to defend itself, that might be shared," he said.
The EP-3 collided with a Chinese fighter jet about 120km south of Hainan last Saturday as the Chinese plane was keeping tabs of the American craft's reconnaissance activities. The Chinese plane ditched into the water, and the EP-3 landed at a military airbase with its 24-member crew, who remain detained on the island.
The plane was collecting "a broad range of electronic emissions that would have been a by-product of the conduct of the exercise," including radio communications, to ascertain "the level of competence in terms of integrating new weapons systems into [PLA] military activities."
These, "could also be very well configured for activities in the Taiwan Strait," he said.
Earlier, in a presentation to a conference on US arms sales to Taiwan, Fisher said that the EP-3's goal "was to determine how well the PLA was able to put together disparate parts, possible naval armaments, possible air elements and their command and control system."
This, in turn, hinged on whether Russia sold China the necessary software to make the hardware work in integrating various components. The software was the focus of the EP-3's activities.
Russia delivered to China two Sovremenny-class destroyers last year, and by the end of the year had supplied lethal Sunburn supersonic anti-ship guided missiles, capable of penetrating warships' hulls before detonation.
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