Which enflamed tensions resulting in the splashing of a Mig.
The others turned back to base.
Posted on 03/07/2003 7:52:32 PM PST by Pokey78
WASHINGTON, March 7 — The North Korean fighter jets that intercepted an unarmed American spy plane over the Sea of Japan last weekend were trying to force the aircraft to land in North Korea and take its crew hostage, a senior defense official said today.
One of the four North Korean MIG's came within 50 feet of the American plane, an Air Force RC-135S Cobra Ball aircraft, and the pilot made internationally recognized hand signals to the American flight crew to follow him, presumably back to his home base, the official said.
The American crew members ignored the gesture commands, aborted the surveillance mission in international airspace about 150 miles off the North Korean coast, and returned safely to their home base at Kadena Air Base in Japan.
The official offered no explanation as to why the North Korean fighters did not take further action once the American plane aborted its mission and turned back toward its base.
The new details of the incident emerged during a day in which North Korea declared a three-day maritime exclusion zone in the Sea of Japan, signaling its intention to test fire a missile. Pentagon officials said it was virtually the same area in which North Korea tested an anti-ship missile on February 25.
Details about the intercept, which came to light after military officials interviewed the flight crew, suggest that the more than 15 Americans aboard faced greater peril than was previously known. Ignoring a fighter pilot's order to land, even in international airspace, could have led to the plane's downing, military officials said today.
"Clearly, it appears their intention was to divert the aircraft to North Korea, and take it hostage," the official said.
The disclosure of what appeared to have been a plan to force down the aircraft came during a broad-ranging interview about the North Korean nuclear crisis with the senior Defense Department official.
In April 2001, a United States Navy surveillance plane collided with a Chinese fighter that was closely tailing it. The plane, an American EP-3E, was forced to make an emergency landing on Hainan island in China. The 24-member crew was detained for 11 days.
Pentagon officials have acknowledged they were caught off guard by the intercept on Saturday night — Sunday morning in Korea — and did not scramble American fighters during the 22 minutes the North Korean jets tailed the four-engine Air Force reconnaissance plane. North Korea's air force is so strapped for fuel and spare parts, its pilots fly only about 13 hours of training missions a year, and rarely stray from their home skies.
Despite the growing tensions over North Korea's push to build a nuclear arsenal, there has not been a serious aerial confrontation between the two countries since North Korea shot down an unarmed American EC-121 reconnaissance plane in 1969, killing 31 American airmen.
For these reasons, Pentagon officials say there is little doubt that the North Korean mission was a well-planned operation that used its top pilots flying two MIG-29's and two MIG-23's.
Pentagon officials acknowledged that there was no way to be certain of the North Korean plan to divert the American plane to the North. There were no radio communications between the aircraft.
They added that the North Korean jets had not "locked on" to the American surveillance plane with their firing radar, as initially suspected — apparently because they were carrying heat-seeking missiles that did not require "fire-control radar" to guide the weapons to their targets.
Nonetheless, officials at the Pentagon and the United States Pacific Command in Hawaii are working out details of plans to protect the reconnaissance flights when they resume shortly. Officials said they were balancing the need to ensure the crew's safety and not be intimidated by the North Koreans, while trying to avoid steps that could unintentionally set off hostilities.
Military officials said that American fighters would not closely escort unarmed reconnaissance planes, but could fly patrols near by. One senior military official said that the Navy might dispatch one of its Aegis-class cruisers to the Sea of Japan to provide early warning of any North Korean flights.
The Cobra Ball reconnaissance planes are highly specialized military versions of a Boeing 707 that monitor ballistic-missile launchings and provide early warning of any firings.
In addition to the shooting down of the EC-121 aircraft in 1969, four North Korean patrol boats seized the Navy intelligence ship Pueblo in January 1968. In response, President Lyndon B. Johnson sent two squadrons of fighter planes to South Korea, called up 15,000 Air Force and Navy reservists and ordered the aircraft carrier Enterprise to a position about 200 miles off the North Korean coast. The Pueblo's 82 crew members were released in December of that year, but the North Koreans kept the ship.
Which enflamed tensions resulting in the splashing of a Mig.
The others turned back to base.
Let's see, was the editor asleep at the switch (preposition at end of sentence), or was the editor happy with the inference that the U.S. plane hit the fighter, and not the other way around? Tough one.
Small? I think you may be hearing from some P-3 Orion crew members.
The U.S.'s nimble, high-performance hegemonous recon plane made a "big left move" before Wang Wei could move his slow, lumbering fighter jet out of the way.
You are obviously a running dog lackey of the Bowery Street billionaires.
You called?
The ORION (and its sibling, the EP-3 ARIES, which was the one forced down in China) weigh up to 200,000 pounds at takeoff, have a 100-foot wingspan, and four gigantic, 5,000 horsepower engines. "SMALL"???
BTW, for those asking, reconnaisance birds like the RC-135, P-3, and EP-3 almost never fly with fighter escorts, on any mission. For one thing, we're a lot slower, so thew fighters have a tough time maintaining controllability at the slower speeds, and for another, fighters attract attention immediately.
There is a REASON that most recon-type birds are derived from civilian airliners, and it's not just about the size...
Considering that the word "it" is a pronoun, it must be the latter.
I would bet the flight crew made a different 'internationally recognized hand signal' right back at them.....
Heh heh. Would love to see the video.
KCNA refutes Bush's bellicose remarks
Pyongyang, March 7 (KCNA) -- U.S. President Bush Tuesday said in an interview with 14 newspapers from around the country that if the diplomatic effort fails to solve North Korea's "nuclear issue," "a military option is its last choice." He referred to the "military option" again after he disclosed that the "United States is keeping all options on the table in dealing with North Korea." It is a very dangerous war outcry driving the military situation on the Korean Peninsula to the brink of war as it is an undisguised revelation of the U.S. intention to make a preemptive strike at the DPRK's nuclear facilities for a peaceful purpose.As far as the U.S. much-publicized "nuclear issue" on the Korean Peninsula is concerned, it can surely be solved if the U.S. has a will to settle it through dialogues and negotiations with the DPRK. By nature, the DPRK's "nuclear issue" is a product of the U.S. hostile policy towards the DPRK as it is a fiction Washington dreamed up in a bid to disarm Pyongyang and bring it to its knees by forcing it to scrap its nuclear program before dialogue.
In peddling the fiction about the DPRK's "nuclear development" the U.S. sought to contain the DPRK and bring it to collapse by force.
To this end the U.S. launched a large-scale "Foal Eagle" joint military exercise in South Korea.
The U.S.-led joint military maneuvers are a replica of the "Team Spirit" joint military exercise in view of their scale, nature, purpose and method of training and a test nuclear war, a preliminary war to seize the DPRK by force.
This sabre rattling is under way at a time when the DPRK-U.S. confrontation is escalating and going beyond the danger line. This goes to prove that the scenario for a preemptive attack on the DPRK on Bush's table is being put into practice.
Bush's remarks on "military option" are little short of a signal to go into action against the DPRK.
No one can vouch that on-going large-scale military exercises will not go over to a nuclear war any time.
The DPRK is following the dangerous military moves of the U.S. with a high degree of revolutionary vigilance and getting fully ready to go into action. The DPRK wants peace but never begs for it. It neither wants war nor avoids it.
The people and the people's army of the DPRK will react to the U.S. "military option" with a strong counteraction and counter an all-out war with an all-out war.
If the U.S. unleashes a war despite the DPRK's repeated warnings it will wipe out the aggressors to the last man by promptly using as many combat means as the U.S. mobilized.
From the KOREAN CENTRAL NEWS AGENCY of DPRK
In general, the countries who are all in a tizzy, are doing what they've done over the millenia --- they "promote" terrorism to control commerce, to their favor; the use of terrorism, to control trade routes, is literally "as old as the hills." That, is where the issue of oil comes in; because they want to control it likewise.
The present crisis is, that "the West" is naturally opposed to terrorism, it's been outlawed. If there's to be coercion, it is to happen in the court room, oozing from the lawyers' vast arsenal of re-interpreted meanings of words which daily make the statutes meaning---less, thus making the game insidiously interesting.
"Peace" will break out in this world, when the older regions abandon terrorism's bombs, bullets, and bugs ... and take up studying law at Yale, whence the Red Chinese and other communist dullards, for example, will begin to appreciate slowly squeezing the life out of one's enemy, by "other means," velly inscrutable.
I guess you are not an USAF vet.
Recce crews troll for more than than overtly "obvious" information gathering functions.
That's one of the reasons why pilots and crew are revered,in the USAF.For every one in the air, are a thousand on the ground, doing thier best to make sure the one has all they need.The one in the air has all the danger.They get killed in peacetime, and you dont see many media reports on it.
Do you ask why an Army Special Forces guy did not have mechanised back up?
It's a dangerous job, every single day, on multiple levels.
Problem only is the US has allowed China to take over "capitalism", as in dominating and exploiting world commerce, while remaining cummunist. Smart little bastards!
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