Downed spy plane expected back in service by year's end

MARIETTA - After colliding with a Chinese fighter jet, spending three months being picked apart and arriving home in pieces, a U.S. Navy spy plane is scheduled to return to service by year&#39;s end. <br> <br> The wings and tail of the EP-3 were cut off for transport back to Hawaii, and much of its sensitive eavesdropping equipment was believed to have been destroyed by crew members on the way down or stripped by Chinese examiners. <br> <br> Repairs are under way at Lockheed-Martin in Marietta to the body of the aircraft, which was forced down April 1, 2001, after the collision in international airspace over the South China Sea. The spy plane&#39;s 24 crew members were detained 11 days while China demanded a U.S. apology. <br> <br> The Lockheed repairs should be completed by May, when the plane will be flown to Raytheon in Waco, Texas, for about five months for previously scheduled electronic updates, Navy spokesman Bob Coble said. <br> <br> ``The inventory of EP-3 aircraft is 11, so it&#39;s not like there&#39;s tons and tons of these things around,&#39;&#39; Coble said. ``It&#39;s a surveillance and reconnaissance airplane, and we&#39;ve got lots of missions for that kind of airplane.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> Coble said he couldn&#39;t discuss what repairs are being made or what information the Chinese might have obtained from the plane due to security concerns. <br> <br> Analysts say China may have gleaned some information from the equipment that was left on the plane. Perhaps the most significant thing the Chinese learned is what the aircraft can do. <br> <br> ``What they would get most of all is a very, very powerful sense of what we are capable of listening to, and what we are capable of finding out,&#39;&#39; said Bates Gill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. ``I think they would be very interested to find that out.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> The EP-3 is basically a ``giant electronics signals vacuum cleaner&#39;&#39; that can pick up data from telephones, radios, walkie-talkies, possibly even e-mail, said Gill, head of the institution&#39;s Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies. <br> <br> The EP-3 focuses not only on data gathered from observing military exercises, but also on how a country responds to knowing the aircraft is there the ``cat-and-mouse game&#39;&#39; played out by spies, former military intelligence officer Roland Schumann said. <br> <br> The EP-3 observes signals from radio, radar, infrared and other weapons-tracking systems to determine how a country detects and then reacts to aircraft in or near various parts of its airspace ``what happens when I go in one area versus another area&#39;&#39; said Schumann, an Army electronic warfare specialist for 10 years. <br> <br> China would be very interested to find out how the United States integrates the plane&#39;s various pieces of hardware, which can then communicate with submarines, ships and other planes in the area and fuse intelligence gathered in the past with intelligence being gathered in real time, he said. <br> <br> Schumann said other countries, including China, may have individual pieces of the hardware found on the plane, but might not know how best to put them together. <br> <br> ``The U.S. has spent an enormous amount of time and money to enhance and upgrade their intelligence systems, and any time an opposing force can get their hands on the end result of those years and money, it&#39;s in their best interest,&#39;&#39; he said. <br> <br> ``It lets them master that learning curve so much faster without the time and money that we had to invest in it.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> Gill said China&#39;s poring over the aircraft for three months could give it ideas for technology to develop. <br> <br> ``The Chinese don&#39;t have anything close to an EP-3 in their entire military, so maybe it shows to them some long-distance dream of capability that they could aspire to,&#39;&#39; he said. <br> <br> Gill said he doesn&#39;t think the new information would be very damaging to the United States. <br> <br> ``One has to assume the Chinese already understand our ability to collect intelligence through these means is pretty darn good,&#39;&#39; he said. ``So their counterintelligence services have to believe worst-case scenario to begin with.&#39;&#39;