Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site utcsstat.UUCP Path: utzoo!utcsrgv!utcsstat!nishri From: nishri@utcsstat.UUCP (%) Newsgroups: net.aviation,net.followup Subject: Re: KAL 747 Airline saga Message-ID: <1048@utcsstat.UUCP> Date: Sun, 11-Sep-83 15:59:54 EDT Article-I.D.: utcsstat.1048 Posted: Sun Sep 11 15:59:54 1983 Date-Received: Sun, 11-Sep-83 16:52:38 EDT References: <134@denelcor.UUCP>, <2211@utcsrgv.UUCP> Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada Lines: 65 September 10, 1983 NEW YORK (CP) - Was the Korean Air Lines jumbo jet spying on Soviet military installations when it was shot down last week, as the Kremlin claims? It is an unpopular question to be asking in the United States, and those beginning to pose it - a few intelligence experts, aviation specialists and diplomats - are careful to preface it by saying the fact certainly wouldn't justify shooting the plane down. But unexplained details of the incident have raised suspicions that the South Korean national airline - like those of the Soviet Union and some of its allies - might be allowing its commercial flights to conduct intelligence- gathering missions. In the words of one authority, the Sept 1 tragedy with its loss of 269 lives was "almost inevitable." U.S. intelligence experts were quoted this weeks as saying KAL pilots have been "almost cavalier" in their disregard for Soviet airspace, particularly by considering the area has been the scene of intensive intelligence efforts in the past 30 years. "KAL is notoriously sloopy when it comes to flying off course," says defense writer Ernest Volkman. "Their record is unequalled, except perhaps for Aeroflot (the Soviet airline) or Cubana (the Cuban airline)." Soviet, Cuban and East European airlines have been known on several occasions to have strayed off their Atlantic coast routes between Cuba and Canada to fly over cruise missile testing grounds and military installations in the United States. The last reported violation of Soviet airspace by the South Koreans was in 1978, when a KAL Boeing 707 flying a polar route between Seoul and Paris found itself over Soviet testing ranges on the Arctic island of Novaya Zemlya, and was forced down. In that incident, the airline also insisted the aircraft had not been warned by Soviet fighter pilots before they opened fire. But the passengers later contradicted the KAL statement; one even produced a snapshot of a Soviet fighter taken from a cabin window. The pilot of the 707, Kim Chang Kyu - who now flies Boeing 747s on the Anchorage-to-Seoul run - was quoted yesterday as saying he found it "very hard to imagine" how the crew of ill-fated Flight 007 was unable to realize it was over the Soviet territory. Weather radar aboard a 747 would almost certainly register images of the Kamchatka peninsula and Kuril Islands, he said. Aviation experts, such as Frank Brady of the Institute of Navigation, have also pointed out how difficult it would be for the sophisticated 747 navigation system to lead Flight 007 as far off course as it apparently was. And why did the jumbo jet, after two hours of overflying Kamchatka and Sakhalin Island, continue on a heading that would have taken it directly over the Soviet city of Vladivostok - despite the apparent presence of the Soviet fighters? Defence writer Volkman, former national security writer for Defence Science magazine and now a freelancer, goes so far as to say KAL airlines "routinely spy over Soviet territory, using civilians for cover." "Nobody with access to intelligence will dispute that the Koreans use commercial for reconnaissance purposes," he said. "The only question is whether this particular flight was on such a mission." Aviation officials, while not so bold, concede a standard 747 flying over Soviet territory is capable of gathering valuable electronic intelligence - ELINT in the U.S. defence jargon - by simply tuning the UHF radio equipment it uses for communication with airline offices to military frequencies. The cockpit voice recorder would register background noise from the radio which would include Soviet transmissions. The tapes theoretically could reveal useful information once they were deciphered in a computer back on the ground. A typical recorder retains only the last 30 minutes of cockpit sounds, one aviation authority said. "And nobody, not even Boeing, knows what the Koreans have added to their planes," he said. There is plenty of room for ELINT equipment in the cargo hold of a 747, and it wouldn't take the six tons of instruments aboard a standard RC-135 reconnaissance plane to make it a useful "spy platform," Volkman said. "A 747 flies at an ideal speed and height to monitor microwave transmissions and test radar defences," Volkman said. "And that would explain why the Soviets are searching so carefully for something that doesn't belong there." He said the use of commercial aircraft for spying is "getting out of hand," and warned that more tragedies will occur unless the practice is stopped.