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| Navy Officer Passed Air Defense Secrets to China |
Navy Officer Passed Air Defense Secrets to China
News trickled out endure weekend about a U.S. Navy administrator answerable with espionage who may accept jeopardized cogent intelligence accumulating capabilities and acute operations because of the admission he had to convoying and assay aircraft.The officer, who has been articular (although not clearly accepted by the Navy) as Lieutenant Administrator Edward C. Lin, is accused of assorted counts of casual and attempting to canyon abstruse advice to a adopted government, reportedly China.
Lin had assignments with a Fleet Air Assay Squadron, which flies the EP-3E Aires II signals intelligence accumulating aircraft, and a Appropriate Projects Squadron.
China may accept an constant appropriate absorption in EP-3E accumulating operations and capabilities traveling aback to the June 2001 mid-air blow amid an EP-3E and a Chinese J-811 interceptor fighter jet. The Chinese pilot was dead in the blow and the EP-3E was affected to acreage on Hainan Island.
Chinese authorities bedfast the aggregation of the EP-3E and abhorrent the United States for the incident. Admiral Dennis C. Blair, the administrator in arch of the United States Pacific Command at the time, accused the Chinese even of tailing the U.S. jet.
Details of the accuse adjoin Lin are scant, based heavily on the three-page, heavily-redacted charging abstracts acquired by US Naval Institute News . According to those allegation sheets, he is accused of assorted counts of casual and attempting to canyon abstruse advice to a adopted government, which is arise to be China.
Espionage is consistently a amount of grave concern. By analogue “secret” advice is that which by its acknowledgment could could could cause austere accident to civic security. The specifics of the advice Lin is accused of compromising will apparently abide protected, though, even throughout court-martial proceedings.
The espionage, however, highlights analytical cardinal issues. The U.S. Navy finds itself in a cardinal ambiance adverse antagonism adjoin not one but two above powers—Russia and China.
Both countries accept taken advantage of a abbreviating gap in U.S. abstruse ahead to actualize areas of “Anti-Access/Area Denial” (A2AD). Both countries accept deployed an arrangement of surface-to-air and anti-ship missiles, and the associated radars and command and control, from the Western Pacific to the Baltic and Barents Seas.
Their operational cold is to accumulate US and affiliated armament at a ambit and stop the United States and its allies from waging war in a address we accept displayed from Operation Desert Storm in 1991, to Operation Odyssey Dawn/Unified Protector in Libya in 2011, to Operation Inherent Resolve adjoin the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria.
Attempting to accretion sea control, operational access, and admission to A2AD air- and waterspace relies on advantages in information, targeting and accommodation timelines.
In 2009, Arch of Naval Operations Admiral Gary Roughead committed to authoritative advice a capital array of the U.S. Navy. The signals intelligence from EP-3E and agnate accumulating platforms is basal to how the U.S. Navy and collective force will action in an A2AD environment.
The cat-and-mouse bold of accepting absolute intelligence on A2AD defenses, while actual undetected in our action amplitude at sea, is a analytical cardinal aspect of the avant-garde and approaching battleground. Acknowledgment of the secrets of our assay sensors may tip that antithesis adjoin the US Navy in a approaching fight.
Even while discussing advice warfare and including cyber and electromagnetic domains in all-domain access, it is absorbing to agenda that what Lin is accused of is acceptable ancient espionage. Rather than cyber espionage or computer arrangement exploitation, which frequently arise in the columnist and accepted ability these days, this was old-school animal intelligence, base animal weaknesses as in Navy espionage cases of decades ago like John Walker—a U.S. Navy Arch Warrant Administrator who was bedevilled of spying for the Soviet Union—and Jonathan Pollard—an intelligence analyst with the Navy who was bedevilled of spying for Israel.
Mentioning those accomplished espionage cases still evokes a quick, affecting acknowledgment in Navy circles. Only time will acquaint if the Lin case will one day do the same.
Given the accused’s admission to front-line intelligence accumulating capabilities and operations, additional the captivation of China, our battling in the Pacific Century, the present espionage case has every adventitious to ability that akin of ballyhoo and could could cause a agnate amount of accident to the United States and civic security.
Captain Steven Horrell is an alive assignment U.S. Navy administrator and is the accepted US Navy Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. The opinions bidding are his own, and do not necessarily reflect the angle of the Department of Defense or the Department of the Navy.
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