On 1 April 2001, in China's airspace over the South China Sea, a US military reconnaissance plane maliciously collided with and destroyed a Chinese fighter plane, resulting in the death of pilot Wang Wei. Then, after China's repeated warnings to no avail, it forcibly landed at the Nanhai airport.
Subsequently, through negotiations between the two sides, China agreed to release the crew of the reconnaissance plane, and the reconnaissance plane was detained. Through years of dismantling and research, how much classified technology have we obtained through this reconnaissance aircraft?
April 1, 2001 was an ordinary day for many people. At this time, a battle to defend sovereignty is being fought in the skies over the South China Sea.
Early in the morning, a US Navy reconnaissance plane flew along China's coastline over the South China Sea, with the aim of spying on China's military operations and layout in the southern region.
Such an act, of course, has aroused great attention from our army. After discovering the enemy's situation, the Air Force immediately dispatched two Jian-8 fighters for safety reasons. At that time, the reason why the two J-8 fighters were activated was not to shoot down directly, but to follow the other side and monitor it, and if illegal acts were discovered, the necessary expulsion actions were taken.
Thus, for some time, the aircraft of the two countries actually had a relatively stationary motion that maintained a distance. However, after discovering China's fighter plane, the pilots of the US reconnaissance plane, out of some consideration, went so far as to fly the plane directly to the fighter piloted by Wang Wei.
The result can be imagined, the huge size of the reconnaissance plane, and it was a sudden operation, so that the pilot Wang Wei could not dodge, and finally the J-8 fuselage was crashed, and the pilot could only choose to eject to escape. However, because the design of China's fighter jet ejection escape at that time was not very ideal, it is unknown whether Wang Wei successfully ejected. In the end, people searched the sea area for several days and still could not find the pilot's body, so they could only be declared dead and given the title of "Guardian of the Sea and Air".
The sudden behavior of the US side made the other pilot realize the seriousness of the situation. After locking on the US reconnaissance plane in the rear, report the relevant situation to the upper level and request**. However, after comprehensive consideration, the above issued instructions not to **, and told the pilot to return immediately. Shortly after our fighters returned to the battlefield, US reconnaissance planes also landed at China's Lingshui Airport in Hainan. Of course, this act of the United States has not been approved and approved by our side.
The US reconnaissance plane collided with and destroyed a Chinese fighter plane for no reason, entered China's airspace area without China's authorization and approval, and entered and landed at China's airfield without authorization. Such an act is a blatant provocation against our country. After the incident, the US side not only did not make any statement or apology for the incident, but even arrogantly demanded that the Chinese side immediately return the reconnaissance plane and release the 24 crew members of the crew.
On the same day, the United States rejected the absurd demands of the United States, and made the United States responsible for the incident and apologized to the people of our country, especially the martyr Wang Wei, who was not only killed in this incident. On the issue of returning the reconnaissance plane and the 24 crew members, the United States appears to be determined to win. In order to get these two things as soon as possible, the United States immediately apologized. But both the attitude and the wording of the apology make the public disagree.
Such a meaningless apology naturally cannot satisfy our country. After several ** and rejections, after six official revisions by the United States, Wang Wei's family and all Chinese people finally waited for a decent apology, and the United States admitted its mistakes in this incident.
Sorry, then the next question is the return of the reconnaissance aircraft and the release of the crew. But with such a provocative behavior, it is naturally impossible for him to go back easily. In the spirit of humanitarianism, our country gave priority to the release of 24 crew members. But how did the reconnaissance plane come, of course, it was impossible to let him go as it was. Later, the United States tried to persuade China to let the reconnaissance plane fly back to the United States as a complete plane, but our side refused.
This reconnaissance plane was the main culprit in the collision and destruction of China's fighter plane, and even led to the death of the outstanding pilot Wang Wei, and then even landed at China's airport regardless of it.
In the end, China demanded that the reconnaissance plane be dismantled in eight pieces before it could return home. When the US experts and the transport plane came, under the supervision of Chinese personnel, the plane was finally dismantled alive and reduced to parts, and the transport plane transported these parts back to China, and the South China Sea plane collision incident finally came to an end.
Many people do not understand China's behavior, why do they have to ask the other side to dismantle China's territory? On the one hand, there is a political need, and on the other hand, there is a need for technology.
After World War II, the United States has been singing about its scientific and technological level, ranking among the world's top in many military aircraft fields, and many technologies have become part of other countries competing to catch up. How to get technology faster, in addition to direct access, dismantling research has also become the main way in many countries. The United States is not happy to disassemble the aircraft in front of our experts, which will lead to a lot of technology being directly exposed to China. However, China's request is already the biggest concession that the United States has to do.
The dismantling process proceeded slowly, from the incident to the delivery of the last batch of parts back to China, which took more than 3 months.
In other words, the plane was stopped on the territory of our country for 3 months. For these three months, the actual controller of this aircraft was all Chinese staff.
Therefore, many people speculate that China may take this opportunity to conduct all-round research on US reconnaissance planes, and to master a number of its high-precision and sophisticated technologies, and then feed back into China's aerospace industry, and achieve good development results.
However, after the incident, both the Chinese side and the United States repeatedly kept silent about the matter, so that the rumors from the outside world were all kinds of things, and even triggered a wave of public discussion. The most common view is that the information and materials contained in the US reconnaissance planes were all discovered by the US reconnaissance planes using a variety of high-end technologies, and are US confidential intelligence.
The EP-3E reconnaissance aircraft was the world's leading reconnaissance aircraft model at that time, and the technical level it covered was first-class at that time. These are undoubtedly a huge treasure in any country.
Judging from the situation at that time, it is impossible for China to be unfeeling, and it may have already quietly sent technicians to turn it upside down.
Such speculation is not unfounded, considering that the period between the incident and the final delivery of parts to the return of the parts lasted up to three months, which is more than enough time for China to complete such a job.
Moreover, there was a half-hour period between the collision and the final landing at the Chinese airport. In accordance with the regulations implemented by the US side, this time should be used to immediately destroy and destroy all materials and other high-tech equipment on board the plane to prevent the enemy from detecting them. If it is carried out normally, the US personnel will also have a certain amount of time to complete these tasks. When they arrived at the airport, what the Chinese got was nothing more than an empty shell, meaningless.
However, it is interesting that the crew of the American reconnaissance plane that collided did not complete the corresponding work in accordance with the stipulated time due to excessive panic. In addition, at that time, the US classified documents were designed with a special destruction program, and judging from the information released later, it is obvious that the crews of these US reconnaissance planes did not receive professional training in this area.
If paper documents can be torn by hand, burned and other physical damage, but for electronic documents, the destruction is much more complicated. The most immediate problem faced by crew members in destruction is that they know which documents are classified, but they do not know how and with what electronic equipment they will use to destroy them.
In the end, it can only be destroyed directly in a very simple and crude way. For example, confidential documents are torn directly by hand instead of the usual shredder. At that time, tape cameras were used, and audio recording was also tape-based, so they were directly torn off by hand. The easiest way to face a laptop or other electronic device group is to smash it, crush it and other extreme violence.
And these physical damages can be perfectly restored in the subsequent technical repair. The idea that the crew expected to solve this problem in such a way fell through.
Therefore, it is possible for our country to use this time to investigate and analyze the EP-3E. Moreover, the study of aircraft technology does not require certain words or data, and professionals can sometimes get some design inspiration through the observation of the finished product, and the data can also be measured and so on. As a result, it is possible to obtain both key high-tech and confidential information.
Of course, what information did the EP-3E have, and what information did the crew destroy in the 30 minutes between the collision and the landing airport? What are the key technologies? What specific technologies did China get from it? For the answers to these questions, most of the Internet is ambiguous. A small number of netizens even said this and that, but everything lacked substantial evidence.
In 2017, the defection of **Deng broke out. Among the several documents he made public, one of which reconstructed the events in the South China Sea, gave people a glimpse of what information and intelligence China might have gotten back then. This may be the most powerful evidence on the Internet that China has obtained a "treasure trove" in the South China Sea incident.
Of course, a lot of information may have been obtained about the plane collision incident in the South China Sea, but this still cannot make up for Wang Wei's death and the damage caused to his family. We hope that as the country grows stronger, such incidents and tragedies will not happen again.