As reported by US-based Popular Mechanics outlet, a US Air Force aircraft used a transponder
code to electronically impersonate a Malaysian plane while spying on China’s military bases.
The outlet quoted the Chinese South China Sea Probing Initiative think tank.
The RC-135W Rivet Joint reconnaissance aircraft flew off China’s Hainan island on Sept 8
and came within 90 km or 56 miles of the Chinese mainland.
The think tank operated by the Chinese government shared a pair of screenshots that showed an
RC-135W take off from Kadena Air Base which is a US Air Force base on the island of Okinawa.
In this video analyzes how the U.S military has fooled China by impersonating RC-135W
Rivet Joint reconnaissance aircraft like a Malaysian plane?
Let's get started.
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The Boeing RC-135 is a family of large reconnaissance aircraft built by Boeing and modified by a
number of companies, including General Dynamics, Lockheed, LTV, E-Systems, and L3 Technologies,
and used by the United States Air Force and Royal Air Force to support theater and national
level intelligence consumers with near real-time on-scene collection, analysis and dissemination
capabilities.
Based on the C-135 Stratolifter airframe, various types of RC-135s have been in service
since 1961.
Many variants have been modified numerous times, resulting in a large variety of designations,
configurations, and program names.
The RC-135W is the USAF's standard airborne SIGINT platform.
Missions flown by the RC-135s are designated either Burning Wind or Misty Wind.
Its sensor suite allows the mission crew to detect, identify, and geolocate signals throughout
the electromagnetic spectrum.
The mission crew can then forward gathered information in a variety of formats to a wide
range of consumers via Rivet Joint's extensive communications suite.
The crew consists of the cockpit crew, electronic warfare officers, intelligence operators,
and airborne systems maintenance personnel.
All Rivet Joint airframe and mission systems modifications are performed by L-3 Communications
in Greenville, Texas, under the oversight of the Air Force Materiel Command.
All RC-135s are assigned to Air Combat Command.
The RC-135 is permanently based at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, and operated by
the 55th Wing, using various forward deployment locations worldwide.
Before we try to understand who this mission was accomplished, we need to understand the
basics of Transponder.
A transponder short for transmitter-responder and sometimes abbreviated to XPDR, XPNDR,
TPDR or TP is an electronic device that produces a response when it receives a radio-frequency
interrogation.
Aircraft have transponders to assist in identifying them on air traffic control radar.
Collision avoidance systems have been developed to use transponder transmissions as a means
of detecting aircraft at risk of colliding with each other.
So, technically if an aircraft such as Boeing 777 is configured to send a transponder response
of Boeing 747 then it will look like the latter in the eyes of air traffic control radar
The plane flew southwest, following the Ryukyu islands chain, past Taiwan, to loiter off
the coast of Hainan Island, Popular Mechanics said, adding that enough details were provided
on Twitter for independent verification.
The outlet added, “The plane’s International Civil Aviation
Organisation (ICAO) Mode-S number, a 24-bit identifier assigned to all aircraft and broadcast
by onboard transponder, was AE01CE.
At some point, the plane’s Mode-S number suddenly changed, from AE01CE to 750548.
“That’s the ICAO number for an unknown Malaysian aircraft.
The RC-135W, call sign RAINY51, then flew a racetrack pattern between Hainan Island
and the Paracel Islands, an archipelago in the South China Sea that China claims, but
whose ownership is in dispute, ”
It is to be noted that ICAO numbers are not supposed to be changed, as that degrades the
overall credibility of the system.
In general, reconnaissance sorties are happening all the time and if an aircraft is outside
the sovereign space, it not illegal.
U.S and Russia engage in these activities regularly in which they gather intelligence
and probe each other's facilities.
It is not correct to speculate why this kind of mechanism was employed for this mission
but there must be an intriguing reason for it.
It is important to note that RC-135W Rivet Joint is a platform that can gather a huge
amount of data in a single mission.
Though the aim of the mission is unclear, it does fit into the overall picture which
indicates that the U.S is increasingly posturing to meet the Chinese threat.
U.S Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said recently, "Beijing's claims to offshore resources across
most of the South China Sea are completely unlawful, as is its campaign of bullying to
control them,” He further added, "the PRC's predatory world
view has no place in the 21st century.”
The Trump administration has indicated that thousands of more U.S troops may be sent to
the Indo-Pacific region, where the U.S. maintains a military presence in Japan, South Korea,
and Singapore.
In the coming days, we are expected to see a more proactive role from the U.
S military in the Indo-Pacific region and many similar missions could be coming up.