Well, some interesting developments today.
Apparently they want an apology from us for starters. Not sure what we're supposed to say really. I guess something along the lines of "Gosh, I'm sorry your pilot hit our plane, causing us to land in hostile territory with busted props, no flaps, and no airspeed indicator."
Word has gotten to the media that this particular pilot has been reportedly hotdogging surveillance aircraft for a few weeks now. I guess he saw "Top Gun" one too many times.
The ex-Ambassador to China said that there's a good chance the military did not communicate clearly to their government just what in the hell really happened, so the government is going on what they were told by the military.
I imagine the last thing the military would want to do is tell their leaders that one of their fiestiest pilots was "shadowing" an American surveillance aircraft, and took it just a bit too far, taking himself out of the play, and damaging the American craft, forcing it to do an emergency landing.
Now that they've apparently taken whatever their military leaders told them at face value, and they've acted on that officially in their correspondence with the U.S., they're kind of between a rock and a hard place.
The Chinese Ambassador said the U.S. needs to apologize, and not fly surveillance missions off the coast of China. He tried to make some allegory about people driving by other people's houses, but it wasn't working too well.
The EP-3 looks like toejam. Also apparently they were able to have 10-15 minutes to destroy the equipment, and reportedly were in contact with their controllers, who actually gave them permission to land instead of ditching. This is all a result of watching TV, so feel free to doubt it's validity, but it all sounded pretty interesting.
Obviously, as I think Toad may have mentioned before, I think the main problem is that these guys have no idea how to play the spy game. Some congressman said that we shadow the Russians all the time, and if any of our planes came in contact with an "enemy" aircraft doing one of those missions, it would be the end of his career.
Maybe we ought to make them a deal, and teach them how to be a super power and deal with ongoing surveillance after they give us our crew and aircraft back.
Be interesting to see how this turns out.
Mk
