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 INFORMATION WARFARE (IW) :

SIGNALS INTELLIGENCE (SIGINT), ELECTRONIC WARFARE (EW) AND CYBER-WARFARE: ASIA AND CUBA

MANUEL CEREIJO

Asia is now leading the world in most of the key areas of Information Warfare (IW) capabilities and operations. There are now more signals intelligence (SIGINT) stations in Asia, intercepting all sorts of high frequency (HF) and very high frequency (VHF) radio, microwave relay and satellite communications (SATCOM) transmissions than in any other part of the world, and more than either the US or the Soviet Union maintained in their world-wide SIGINT networks at the height of the Cold War.  An increasing proportion of the world's electronic intelligence (ELINT) and electronic warfare (EW) equipment, now probably exceeding a third of the world's total, for intercepting or jamming radar signals and other electronic emissions, is being procured by Asian defence forces.  And in Asia, where the 'digital divide' is large but where internet connectivity is generally high and growing rapidly, most countries have been making efforts to control and monitor Internet usage, e-mail traffic, and computer-to-computer data traffic.  Many have also developed or are in the process of developing capabilities for penetrating the computer networks in other countries and manipulating or destroying critical economic or military information.  As the Far Eastern Economic Review reported in August 2001:  'Asia is emerging as [the] early proving ground' for cyber-warfare.[1]

More important than the global shifts have been the extraordinary increase in these activities in Asia and the regional issues which have generated them.  Among the larger and/or more developed countries in the region, SIGINT and EW activities more than doubled during the decade from the late 1980s to the late 1990s, whether measured in terms of budgets, SIGINT ground stations or EW sets, or personnel engaged in these activities.  The end of the Cold War produced enormous strategic uncertainty in Asia, and necessitated moves to enhanced defence self-reliance in the region.  It became imperative to know more about the diplomatic and military communications of regional neighbours.  This required large ground stations for the interception of strategic communications intelligence (COMINT) and, increasingly, SATCOM interception capabilities.[2]

Most countries in Asia have been able to afford the investments required for greater self-reliance.  In many cases, in Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia, this has involved the acquisition of maritime defence capabilities – including submarines and surface combatants as well as maritime aircraft, and often involving over-the-horizon or beyond-visual-range anti-ship missile systems.  More thorough maritime surveillance capabilities, including ELINT, were needed to police and protect the 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) in the western Pacific.  Overall, Asia's share of world military expenditure doubled in the decade from 1986 to 1996, and, in the case of arms imports into the region, Asia's share of world expenditure on arms transfers has increased nearly three-fold since the early 1980s – from 15.5 per cent in 1982 to 33.24 per cent in 1993[3] to 41 per cent in 1998.[4]  Asia's share of world EW equipment increased by a similar factor as, for the first time in many instances, Asian countries acquired modern weapons systems with integral ESM (electronic support measures) and self-defence EW systems.  Effective operation of these systems necessitates the maintenance of current and comprehensive catalogues of the electronic order of battle (EOB) – the location and character of radar sites, communication transmitters, navigation beacons, and other electronic emitters in the surrounding neighbourhood and possible areas of operation further afield.  This is turn has required the acquisition of dedicated airborne and ship-based ELINT/ESM collection systems, which sometimes operate together with (or even aboard the same platform as) jamming and other electronic counter-measures (ECM) systems.

The regional interest in the acquisition of modern EW capabilities was significantly strengthened by the perceived 'lessons' of Operation Desert Storm against Iraq in January-February 1991, when Allied EW operations effectively crippled the Iraqi C³I system and rendered the extensive Iraqi air defence system impotent, allowing coalition forces to deliver ordnance with extraordinary precision and impunity.  In China's case, for example, the intelligence and EW aspects of the Gulf War were closely monitored by a special SIGINT unit located in Kashi, 1,700 miles from Baghdad, that intercepted large amounts of US and Allied military communications.[5]  Chinese defence analysts quickly appreciated both the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) and its IW dimension.[6]

The terrorist attacks on the US homeland on 11 September 2001, Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and the 'war on terror' more generally have been closely studied by regional strategic and defence planners.  They have been impressed by the US application of the RMA and IW in Afghanistan, and have accepted the need, insofar as resources permit, to enhance the constituent elements of C³ISREW (command, control, communications, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and early warning), with the acquisition of new sensor systems, advanced communications and information technologies, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for both intelligence collection and platforms for launching precision guided munitions (PGMs).[7]  One leading regional strategic analyst expects that some East Asian countries 'will try to emulate a scaled-back version [of US strategy in Afghanistan], adopting a limited form of network-centric warfare'.[8]  September 11 and the war on terror have also excited concerns about the vulnerability of national information infrastructures (involving telecommunications networks, banking and financial facilities, air traffic control systems, power generation and distribution systems, etc.) to cyber-terrorism.  Intelligence collection activities, including electronic surveillance by monitoring computer files, Internet connections, e-mails and computer-to-computer data traffic, is likely to become more intrusive – causing tensions with neighbours whose networks are increasingly being penetrated and diminishing civil liberties domestically. 

Asian countries are extremely diverse, with enormous disparities in their geographical areas, populations and resources, as well as their geostrategic positions, defence capabilities, intelligence interests and proficiency with advanced information technology.  No country in Asia is able to match the US in terms of the breadth and sophistication of the SIGINT, EW and cyber-warfare capabilities that the latter maintains in the region.  There is an extended and variegated hierarchy of countries, similar to and roughly paralleling that which obtains with regard to their relative abilities to absorb and employ the RMA.[9]  The best equipped and most adept in the key IW areas are Australia, Japan and South Korea, which enjoy close alliance relationships with the US, including extensive collaboration in technical intelligence collection programs.  A second tier comprises those countries with both high threat perceptions and sufficient resources to acquire extensive, but somewhat less comprehensive and/or less sophisticated, IW capabilities – such as China, India, Taiwan and Singapore in their different ways and their different circumstances.  A third tier comprises countries where threat perceptions are lower and/or defence and intelligence resources more limited, such as Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.  These maintain extensive radio communications interception capabilities, and have been acquiring some modern ELINT/EW systems, but their employment is relatively unsophisticated.  The fourth tier consists of those countries that are finding it very difficult to function in the information age, such as Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia and Papua New Guinea.  The hierarchy is transitive.  Many countries in the third tier aspire to more substantial and more advanced capabilities.  Moreover, some IW operations, such as cyber-warfare and cyber-terrorism, are attractive to some poorer countries and to non-State actors as asymmetric responses to predominant US/Allied conventional military power, and, in domestic situations, to repressive governments.

IW is practiced especially energetically and enterprisingly by non-State actors of various sorts in Asia.  This reflects, in large part, the high incidence of intra-State conflicts and challenges to governmental legitimacy, involving numerous armed insurgent groups and separatist movements that have organised radio interception, cryptological and cyber-warfare services.  In Burma, at least until the early 1990s, several ethnic insurgent groups (including the Kachin Independence Organisation, the Shan State Army, the Karenni Army and the Karen National Liberation Army, as well as the Communist Party of Burma until its collapse in 1989) maintained radio interception and cryptanalytical organisations which were superior to the SIGINT capabilities of the Burmese armed forces.[10]  More recently, the United Wa State Army (UWSA), the largest and wealthiest drug trafficking group in Burma, has acquired the capacity to intercept Thai Army radio traffic in the Burma-Thailand borderlands.[11]  In Sri Lanka, the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTEE) have monitored Indian and Sri Lankan military, police, and security agency communications, and have successfully used SIGINT in military operations.[12]  In Papua New Guinea in the late 1990s, the secessionist Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) regularly intercepted PNG Defence Force radio communications.[13]  Civil non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have also taken to intercepting communications in embattled areas.  In East Timor in September 1999, for example, foreign observers monitoring the self-determination vote intercepted the two-way radio conversations of the Indonesian special forces officers and the leaders of the local militia groups planning the post-ballot carnage.[14] 

Cyber activities, using the World Wide Web and the Internet, are both inherently trans-national and empowering to non-State actors, whether political activists, terrorists, or nihilists.[15]  The 'Love Bug' computer virus, which infected some 1.27 million computers world-wide on 4 May 2000, causing hundreds of millions of dollars of damage to businesses in the US and Europe, was released by a failed Filipino college student in Manila.[16]  In Northeast Asia since 1999, non-governmental politically-motivated cyber-warriors in the PRC, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea have attacked and damaged official web-sites and computer-based networks in other countries.  Indeed, some comparative assessments have placed non-State actors higher than most nations in Asia with respect to their proficiency at cyber-warfare.[17]

This paper describes the recent developments in SIGINT, EW and cyber-warfare activities in Asia and Cuba.  It discusses both changes in the targets of SIGINT collection operations, such as the increasing value of SATCOM SIGINT, satellite telephones (sat-phones), mobile (cell) phones and computer networks; and the availability of new technical capabilities, such as UAVs, SATCOM monitoring systems, and cyber-warfare capabilities.  It also notes, wherever appropriate, the strategic considerations and security concerns that have generated this activity – the strategic uncertainty, the requirements of increasing defence self-reliance, the EW elements of defence modernisation programs, the maritime surveillance obligations, the operational lessons of the Gulf War in 1991, the implications of the RMA, the study of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, and the concerns about the threat of terrorism (including cyber-terrorism).

Cyber-warfare activities are in important technical respects a direct evolution of the SIGINT and EW activities of the past half- century or so into the Information Age, where communications systems and computer networks are transfused.  They generally involve the erstwhile SIGINT agencies, the repositories of advanced IT, linguistic and mathematical expertise, and they often employ the same collection facilities – especially Embassies and other diplomatic establishments in foreign countries, and airborne systems, which are increasingly being used for cyber-warfare activities.  But there are also some profoundly novel dimensions.  From a collection perspective, a change is underway from focussing on interception of information 'in motion', as electromagnetic waves travel through the ether, to collection and manipulation of information 'at rest', stored on computer data bases, disks and hard drives.[18]  The inherent transnational and non-State attributes of cyber activities, confounding distinctions between external and internal security operations, pose not only new technical challenges but also contain new risks, in terms of both national vulnerabilities and threats to civil liberties.

Ground facilities

Ground stations of various types still account for the greatest volume of signals collection activities in Asia, although there have been enormous changes in the US and Russian dispositions in the region since the end of the Cold War, and numerous new complexes constructed by the regional countries themselves.  The US is no longer interested in covering all HF radio transmissions around the world, but the HF band is still very important in Asia.

During the 1990s, the US National Security Agency (NSA) closed down most of its world-wide HF radio interception and HF-DF network.  Most of the large circularly-disposed antenna arrays (CDAAs), which formed the nodes of this network – i.e., the AN/FLR-9 CDAAs used by the Army and Air Force SIGINT agencies, and the AN/FRD-10 Classic Bullseye (or Flaghoist) system used by the US Navy – were dismantled.  These large arrays have a nominal range exceeding 5,000 km, with a DF accuracy typically better than one-half of a degree.  The only two FLR-9s still functioning are in the Pacific – at Elmendorf, near Anchorage, in Alaska and Misawa in Japan.  Nearly all the remaining FRD-10s are also in the Pacific – at Guam;  Wahiawa, Hawaii;  San Diego, California;  and Hanza, Okinawa.  Another FRD-10 is at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.  In addition, Canada has an FRD-10 CDAA at Masset, on the north coast of Graham Island in British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands, which is remotely operated from a master station at Leitrim, just south of Ottawa, and which functions as part of the Classic Bullseye HF-DF network in the north Pacific.[19]  The only countries in Asia which now host US SIGINT ground stations are Japan, South Korea and Thailand, although several other countries have SIGINT cooperation and exchange arrangements with the US – most notably Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore.

During the Cold War, the US had, at different times, some 100 SIGINT sites in Japan.  Many were small and short-lived, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, but some were very large, with hundreds of US SIGINT personnel.  Since the end of the Cold War, nearly all US SIGINT collection activities in Japan have been consolidated at three sites – Misawa, in the northeast of Honshu island, which is the largest US SIGINT complex in Asia, and perhaps the largest SIGINT complex in the world, with both a FLR-9 CDAA and extensive SATCOM SIGINT facilities, maintained by some 1,800 SIGINT personnel (900 US Air Force, 700 Navy and 200 Army);[20] Yokosuka, at the entrance to Tokyo Bay, where the US Navy has a SIGINT collection and processing station;[21]  and Hanza, Okinawa, which has an FRD-10 CDAA, and which is to be relocated to Camp Hansen, about 20 km to the northeast, by 2005.

In the late 1970s, the NSA established the Kunia [Pacific] Regional SIGINT Operations Center (KRSOC) at Kunia, Hawaii, to receive and process data from manned and unmanned SIGINT sites in East Asia and the western Pacific.  Two of its unmanned stations are located at Khon Kaen, in northeast Thailand, which monitors communications in southern China and Indochina, and at Taegu, in South Korea, which is targeted against communications in China and North Korea.[22]  Admiral Dennis Blair, the former Commander-in-Chief Pacific (CINCPAC), has told Congress that 'the current KRSOC is obsolete', and that a new facility is required 'to sustain the level of [cryptologic] support' in the Pacific theatre.[23]  CINCPAC wants to build a new Pacific Security Analysis Complex (PSAC), which would combine the current KRSOC and Joint Intelligence Center Pacific (JICPAC) to provide 'immediate in-depth collaboration between the premier signals intelligence and production centers [in the Pacific]'.[24]

The Soviet Union had built more than a dozen stations in Mongolia, North Korea, Cambodia and Vietnam, but these have now all been closed.  For example, a SIGINT station established in 1985 at Ramona, in the southwest corner of North Korea, and about 150 km northwest of Seoul, and staffed by 80 GRU and FAPSI personnel, was closed in 1997.[25]

The last was the station at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam, which ceased operations on 1 January 2002 and, after the SIGINT equipment was dismantled and flown back to Russia, was vacated in May.[26]  The SIGINT complex at Cam Ranh Bay was once described by CINCPAC as 'the [third] largest in the world outside the Soviet Union'.[27]  In 1992-93, 'some 200' Russian SIGINT personnel were stationed at the complex;  this had fallen to 'about 100' in May 1995;[28]  and by December 2000 there were only 30.[29]  Its facilities included a satellite communications intercept system, two Fix 24 HF-DF CDAAs, and a Park Drive communications satellite terminal which provided a direct communications link between the Cam Ranh Bay SIGINT complex and the Soviet Navy's Pacific Fleet Headquarters at Vladivostok 'as well as with the General Staff in Moscow'.[30]

China maintains by far the most extensive SIGINT capabilities of all the countries in Asia, with several dozen ground stations deployed throughout the country, monitoring signals from Russia, the Central Asian states of the former Soviet Union, Japan, Taiwan, India, and Southeast Asia, as well as internal communications.  The largest station is the SIGINT Net Control Station of the Third (or Technical) Department of the General Staff Headquarters, which is located at Xibeiwang, on the northwest side of Beijing.  Other large stations are attached to the HQs of each of the Military Regions (i.e., Beijing, Shenyang, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Lanzhou, Jinan and Nanjing), as well as at sites near Jilemutu and Lake Kinghathu in the northeast of China;  near Shanghai;  in the Fujian and Guandong Military Districts opposite Taiwan;near Kunming;  at Lingshui, on the southern edge of Hainan Island;  and along the border with Vietnam.[31]  A SIGINT station was also established on Rocky Island (Shi-tao), near Woody Island (Lin-tao) in the Paracel Archipelago in the 1980s;  the site is one of the highest points in the area, and provides good coverage of signal activity in the northwestern part of the South China Sea.[32]

Many of them were expanded during the 1990s.  For example, the large SIGINT complex at Lingshui, which monitors signals from the South China Sea, Vietnam and the Philippines, was 'vastly expanded by 1995'.[33]  This SIGINT complex, where more than 1,000 SIGINT analysts work, is located about 1.5 km west of the Lingshui military airfield where the US Navy's stricken EP-3 SIGINT aircraft landed on 1 April 2001.[34]  Two large stations in Xinjiang – one at Dingyuanchen, used for monitoring communications in Russia and the Central Asian states, and the other at Changli, near Urumchi, used primarily for intercepting satellite communications – were expanded in 1999-2000.[35]

In 1991-92, Chinese technicians constructed a large SIGINT station at Great Coco Island, a Burmese island located just 50 km north of India's Andaman Islands, on the western side of the entrance to the Straits of Malacca.  The station, which is operated by the Chinese, provides intelligence on air and naval movements in the eastern Indian Ocean, and is able to intercept telemetry associated with Indian ballistic missile test launches over the Bay of Bengal.[36]  Chinese technicians also assisted with the construction of six electronic surveillance stations along Burma's coastline, which monitor shipping between the Indian Ocean and the Straits of Malacca.  These stations are located at Ramree Island, southeast of Sittwe, off the coast of Arakan;  Hainggy Island, in the estuary of the Bassein River;  Monkey Point, on the southeast side of Rangoon;  Kyaikkami, south of Moulmein;  Mergui;  and Zadetkyi Kyun (or St Matthew's Island), off Burma's southernmost point, Kawthaung (or Victoria Point).[37]

Japan has about 25 SIGINT ground stations of various sorts and capabilities, of which ten are large stations maintained by the Chosa Besshitsu, or Chobetsu, Japan's SIGINT agency, and the new Defence Intelligence Headquarters (DIH) which now incorporates the Chobetsu.[38]  These are located at Ooi, about 30 km northwest of central Tokyo, which is probably the network control station;  Wakkanai, at the northern tip of Hokkaido, which is well-known because of the KAL-007 shoot-down on 1 September 1983;[39]  Chitose, in the southwest part of Hokkaido, which the Chobetsu took over from the US in 1971, and later constructed a large FLR-9-type CDAA there, which is the main Japanese station for monitoring Russian signals traffic, and which was for many years Japan's largest SIGINT complex;  Shibetsu and Higashi Nemuro in Nemuro prefecture, in the northeast corner of Hokkaido, which monitor the approaches to the Kurile Islands;  Okushiri Island, off the southwest coast of Hokkaido, which became operational in May 1990 and which monitors Russian communications;[40]  Kobunato, near Shibata, on the west coast of Honshu;  Miho, near Yonaga, the closest point in Japan to North Korea, which has a large CDAA and is the main station for monitoring signals in North Korea;  Tachiari, on the northern side of the island of Kyushu, which intercepts Chinese communications;  and at Kikai-jima, a small island at the northern end of the Ryuku island chain, which has recently been equipped with Japan's third large CDAA system and which is Japan's most important SIGINT station for intercepting Chinese communications.  In addition, two smaller, Pusher-type unmanned CDAA HF-DF systems were installed at Shiraho, on the island of Ishigaki, just northeast of Taiwan, in the mid-1980s.  The JMSDF and JASDF also maintain numerous ELINT stations for monitoring radar emissions from ships and aircraft moving around Japan.

Taiwan has built, with NSA assistance, a large SIGINT facility on Yangminghshan Mountain, just north of Taipei.  The facility replaced a station which the US had at Shu Lin Kou, northwest of Taipei, which the US officially handed over to Taiwan in 1979, but at which US 'civilian contractors' continued to work jointly with their Taiwanese hosts.  It consists of a large antenna farm for monitoring military communications within Nanjing and Guangzhou Military Regions, and eight SATCOM dishes, some of which may be intercepting Chinese satellite communications and some are for relaying data back to the NSA HQ in Maryland.[41]

In Southeast Asia, several countries have substantial SIGINT organisations, although they are smaller and their capabilities more limited.  In the 1960s and 1970s, Vietnam developed a remarkable SIGINT organisation, with numerous ground stations (including covert interception and analysis facilities in the South), thousands of SIGINT personnel, and an ability to monitor and decrypt a large proportion of US and allied communications.[42]  However, this capability has largely atrophied.  Thailand now has the most extensive network of SIGINT ground stations, including numerous radio monitoring sites along the Burmese border which listen to the HF and VHF radio and walkie-talkie traffic of the Burmese Army and the various drug trafficking and ethnic insurgent groups in Burma.[43]  However, Thailand's SIGINT capabilities require modernisation, while the Thai intelligence organisation must be drastically reformed if the SIGINT is to better inform both policy-making in Bangkok and operations in the borderlands.

Singapore has the most advanced SIGINT capabilities in terms of technical and operational sophistication, complementing two ground facilities with modern airborne systems, and capable of comprehensively and systematically monitoring communications out to about 2,000 km around the island.  One ground station is at Kranji, in the northwest of the island, which was originally established by Australia's DSD in 1971 and then taken over by Singapore in 1974, and which was used to monitor military, diplomatic, and commercial communications across Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, China, and the Indochinese countries.[44]  It has reportedly since been 'vastly expanded'.[45]  A second site is maintained by Army SIGINT units at Nee Soon Camp in the middle of Singapore.[46]

Australia maintains the largest and most capable SIGINT establishment in the Southeast Asian region.  Its SIGINT agency, the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD), doubled in size between the early 1980s and the early 1990s, reaching nearly 2,000 personnel in 1992 – at which time it had stations at Pearce, near Perth, Western Australia, equipped with a Pusher-type 48-element CDAA, for monitoring communications in South Asia and the Indian Ocean; Shoal Bay, near Darwin, Northern Territory, the largest station, also equipped with a Pusher, which focuses on Indonesian communications but also covers other parts of Southeast Asia;  Cabarlah, near Toowoomba, in Queensland, which has another Pusher and which monitors HF transmissions across Southeast Asia and throughout the Southwest Pacific;  Bamaga, at the tip of Cape York in north Queensland, established in 1988 to monitor communications in Papua New Guinea (and especially Bougainville), and operated remotely from Cabarlah;  and at HMAS Harman, at the southeastern outskirts of Canberra, which was originally established in 1939-40, and which has been used to monitor diplomatic traffic to foreign embassies in Canberra as well as other transmissions emanating from Southeast Asia.  A new DSD HQ was officially opened in Canberra in May 1992; and a station was being constructed at Kojarena, near Geraldton, in Western Australia, for intercepting satellite communications (SATCOM).[47]  Since then, new investment has been directed mainly towards further enhancement of DSD's SATCOM interception capabilities and the acquisition of new airborne collection systems.  However, a large SIGINT/HF-DF station has recently been constructed at Morundah, near Wagga Wagga, in southeastern Australia, to replace the DSD station at Harman, as part of a larger effort to modernise the Australian Defence Force's HF radio communications network.  It is equipped with two Pusher-type 48-element CDAAs.[48]

Interception of satellite communications

Many countries in Asia now have the ability to monitor selected foreign communications satellites (COMSATs), as well as record, process, decrypt, translate, and analyse the intercepted material – including telephone conversations, faxes, e-mails and other electronic communications.   

The US maintains the most extensive SATCOM SIGINT capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region.  The first US station established to intercept international satellite communications in the region was located at Yakima, in Washington State in the northwest US.  It became operational in the early 1970s, and for a decade was equipped with a single large dish antenna for intercepting communications passing through the INTELSAT COMSAT stationed over the Pacific Ocean.[49]  In 1995, it had five dish antennas, three facing westwards, one of which 'appears to be the UKUSA site for monitoring the Inmarsat-2 satellite that provides mobile satellite communications in the Pacific Ocean area'.[50]  Code-named Cowboy, the Yakima station was one of the original stations in the Echelon system, the global system organised by the UKUSA countries for monitoring the non-military telecommunications of other governments, businesses and private organisations.[51]  The largest US station in the region is at Misawa, in northern Honshu, Japan.  Code-named Ladylove, the SATCOM SIGINT facility achieved an interim operational capability in 1982.[52]  The permanent complex became operational in 1987, at which time there were six radomes at the site.  It grew rapidly over the next several years, reaching 13 radomes in 1991.  There were 14 radomes in 1997.[53]  The Ladylove project was originally designed to intercept communications from Soviet elliptically-orbiting Molniya and geostationary Raduga and Gorizont communications satellites.  The expansion in the late 1980s and early 1990s included capabilities for intercepting Chinese satellite communications and INTELSAT communications.[54]  In 1993, the Ladylove operation at Misawa was incorporated into the Echelon system.[55]  Another SATCOM intercept station is evidently located on Guam, at which an Echelon unit (code-named Project Marlock) was activated in 1995.[56]

Russia has a Big Ear SATCOM SIGINT station at Andreyevka, near Vladivostok, for monitoring satellite communications in northeast Asia.  The Japanese Chobetsu/DIH maintains a SATCOM SIGINT station at Chitose, near Sapporo, in the southwest part of Hokkaido, for intercepting transmissions from Russia's Molniya and Gorizont communications satellites.[57]

China has also developed SATCOM SIGINT capabilities for monitoring international satellite communications.  In December 1968, for example, it was reported that China had established 'a ground station for intercepting signals transmitted through the US and Russian communication satellite systems', together with an associated decryption capability, on Hainan Island.[58]  The station is situated at the Lingshui SIGINT complex.[59]  A second SATCOM SIGINT station is located outside Beijing.  On 4 June 1989, for example, Chinese authorities intercepted unedited video relating to the Tiananmen massacre which was transmitted by the American Broadcasting Corporation via satellite (and which was then used by the Chinese authorities to track down and arrest one of the leading dissidents).[60]  A third station is located at Changli, in western China, for monitoring satellite communications in central Asia.[61]  China has also established a SATCOM SIGINT station at Santiago de Cuba, at the eastern end of Cuba, to intercept US satellite communications.[62]  A satellite tracking and control station at Kiribati, which sits astride the equator in the central Pacific, is also capable of intercepting selected (S-band) satellite communications in the mid-Pacific.[63]

Taiwan is able to intercept Chinese satellite communications.  In India, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) of the Cabinet Secretariat maintains a number of SATCOM SIGINT stations, one site of which is Sikandarabad, across the Yamuna from Delhi.[64]

Australia has the most extensive SATCOM SIGINT capabilities in the Southeast Asian region.  The main station is at Kojarena, near Geraldton, in Western Australia.[65]  It became operational in 1993, and monitors a wide range of the communications satellites stationed in geostationary orbits over the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia.  One of its primary functions was to replace the joint GCHQ-DSD SATCOM SIGINT station at Chung Hong Kok in Hong Kong (Project Kittiwake), which intercepted Chinese satellite communications, but which was closed in 1995.[66]  The station intercepts both regional geostationary satellites (such as Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Indian and Pakistani communications satellites) and international communications satellites (including INTELSAT COMSATs and INMARSAT maritime COMSATs).[67]

DSD also maintains a large SATCOM SIGINT station (Project Larkswood) at Shoal Bay, near Darwin, for monitoring Indonesian satellite communications.  It had eleven SATCOM dishes as at September 1999, and was one of the most lucrative sources of intelligence about the role of the Indonesian military and police, and their militia surrogates, in the violence in East Timor in 1999.[68]

New Zealand has a SATCOM SIGINT station at Waihopai (code-named Flintlock), which became operational in 1990, and which focuses on satellite communications in the southwest Pacific area, working in close cooperation with the NSA station at Yakima and the DSD station at Kojarena.[69]

In Southeast Asia, Singapore is the only country with a functioning foreign SATCOM SIGINT facility.  It intercepts the down-links of both regional and international COMSATs, including INMARSATs.

In addition to intercepting foreign/international satellite communications for intelligence purposes, some countries have acquired capabilities for jamming selected satellite broadcasts and down-links.  Both the US and the Soviet Union developed SATCOM jamming capabilities during the Cold War.  China has also developed limited SATCOM jamming capabilities.[70]  India has constructed a station at Jalna, in Maharashtra state, some 300 km northeast of Bombay, 'to monitor and possibly screen out foreign [satellite television] broadcasts'.[71]  Indonesia (according to the commander of the US Space Command) has 'relatively primitive' anti-satellite jammers, involving 'basic radio-frequency transmitters', which it has used on several occasions since 1996 to interfere with the COMSATs of commercial rivals or to jam politically or ideologically objectionable transmissions.[72]  In 1996, Indonesia jammed a (C-band) communications satellite following a commercially-inspired dispute with Tonga over claimed satellite orbital positions.[73]  In May 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that there has been 'instances' where Indonesia had jammed a Chinese satellite which was evidently broadcasting information to Muslim fundamentalists and which it found objectionable.[74]  Some non-State organisations, such as the Falun Gong movement in China, have also demonstrated the ability to jam (and even hijack) satellite transmissions.[75]  There has also been a growing appreciation that some forms of SATCOM transmissions, including those involving satphones and GSM cell phones, can be used for targeting purposes – as demonstrated in April 1996 when Russian authorities killed the president of Chechnya with an air-to-surface missile while he was talking on a satphone via the INMARSAT network, and in August 1998 when the US used Osama bin Laden's satphone transmissions to target cruise missiles in the attack against the al-Qaeda base at Khowst.[76]  In July 1999, the Pakistan Army reportedly used intercepts of satphone transmissions by Indian television reporters accompanying Indian Army troops in the Kargil region to direct a deadly artillery bombardment on the Indian position.[77]

Of course, every country has the ability to intercept (and sever or jam) international satellite communications entering national gateways.  In some countries this is done by SIGINT/cyber cells co-located with the national gateway stations, or utilising the facilities at national SATCOM ground control stations.  In Burma, for example, all international telecommunications are intercepted by the Directorate of Defence Services Intelligence (DDSI) at the SATCOM ground station in Thanlyin, across the Bago River from Rangoon.[78]  In Singapore, the facilities of Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) are used by various government agencies for intercepting all telephone and fax traffic.[79]  In democratic countries, such as Australia, access to domestic communications is subject to due legal process (typically involving issuance of warrants by judicial authorities).

Airborne SIGINT capabilities

The extent, variety and sophistication of airborne SIGINT operations has increased markedly in Asia over the past decade.  Russian SIGINT flights around Japan have been greatly reduced, and the Bear D operations to and from Cam Ranh Bay, over the East and South China Seas, have ceased entirely.  But US airborne activities in the western Pacific have been upgraded, while eight regional countries have been acquiring their own capabilities – viz.:  Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Australia, Singapore, Thailand and India.  Airborne systems are very expensive to operate and maintain, but they provide the only cost-effective means for regular, real-time surveillance of the electromagnetic emissions in important parts of the spectrum that are undetectable from ground sites.

The primary airborne collection mission is electronic intelligence (ELINT), involving 'ferret' flights designed to intercept and record the emissions of radars and other radio/electronic systems – garnering data about the signal sources, strengths and characteristics (such as operating frequencies, pulse repetition rates, antenna rotation speeds, etc.), to map air defence networks, airfields and missile batteries for target planning purposes.  These flights are sometimes deliberately provocative, intending to generate programmed responses.  Others are equipped for interception of naval radars and emitters, enabling them to locate, identify and track (and plan electronic or missile attacks against) surface ships.  For many countries in Asia, airborne ELINT systems provide the primary means of ocean surveillance.  Some aircraft carry both passive ELINT and active EW systems, such as jammers and electronic counter-measures (ECM) equipment, allowing them to monitor and record some signals for intelligence purposes while jamming or manipulating and deceiving other electronic systems.  Others are configured for COMINT, loitering for hours in favourable radio reception areas to intercept HF and VHF radio communications.  More specialised aircraft focus on the interception of the telemetry and associated signal traffic generated during foreign missile tests, or on special types of communications. 

The most modern US systems are able to intercept e-mail and computer-to-computer data traffic, as well as cell phone traffic, serving cyber-warfare tasks rather than more conventional SIGINT collection missions.  Special receivers have been installed on at least one US Air Force SIGINT aircraft, and were reportedly also carried by the Navy EP-3 involved in the incident off Hainan on 1 April 2001, which intercept the proforma data codes used in computer-to-computer data exchanges.  The proforma include the dial tones of protocols and link-ups that determine the signalling method (such as data transfer multiplexers and private branch exchanges) and the paths and speeds of data transmission.  The airborne cyber-warriors are reportedly able to 'conduct intrusions of foreign computer systems', and hence manipulate, deceive or disable them.[80]

The US continues to operate by far the largest and most active, as well as the most advanced, fleet of SIGINT aircraft in the Asia-Pacific region.  More than 30 US aircraft are engaged, several of them on a daily basis, in collecting SIGINT of some sort or another around East Asia and the western Pacific.  The US now flies more than 400 reconnaisance missions a year along the periphery of China, or an average of more than one per day,[81] mostly for SIGINT purposes, and mostly with flights originating from bases in Japan.  The US Air Force has a base for RC-135V/W Rivet Joint SIGINT aircraft at Kadena in Okinawa, Japan, where 1-2 of them are normally stationed.  Another 1-2 are sometimes based at Misawa.  These aircraft, which carry a SIGINT crew of some 21-27 radio and radar intercept officers, linguists and maintenance technicians, as well as three pilots and two navigators, and which can stay aloft (with aerial refuelling) for 10-30 hours, are used for intercepting both communications and electronic signals.  Three RC-135S Cobra Ball aircraft, which are based at Eilson Air Force Base in Alaska, and which sometimes deploy to Misawa, are designed to intercept telemetry from foreign missile tests.  For example, Cobra Ball aircraft were dispatched to Misawa in September-December 1997, when a full-range test of North Korea's Nodong-1 intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) was expected,[82] and in August 1999 and August 2000, when test flights of North Korea's Taepodong-2 missile were expected.[83]  The US Air Force also has 1-2 U-2R Senior Spear SIGINT aircraft based at Osan Air Base, South Korea, which fly Olympic Game missions to intercept Chinese and North Korean communications.[84]  The US Navy has a squadron (VQ-1) of six EP-3E ARIES (Advanced Reconnaissance Integrated Electronics System) II SIGINT aircraft, based at Whidbey Naval Air Station in Washington, but with a permanent detachment of 1-2 aircraft at Misawa, and a forward operating base at Kadena.  (The EP-3E aircraft involved in the April 2001 incident operated from Kadena.)  Another eight ES-3A Shadow aircraft are used for carrier-based SIGINT operations, with six home-based at the North Island Naval Air Station in San Diego, California, and two at Misawa.

Table 1

US SIGINT aircraft based in the Asia-Pacific region

The US Army's 3rd Military Intelligence Battalion, 501st Military Intelligence Brigade, based at Camp Humphreys, near Pyongtaek, about 90 km south of Seoul, has 12 Beech RC-12 Guardrail and three RC-7B ARL-M (Airborne Reconnaissance Low-Multifunction) aircraft.  The Guardrail aircraft, which usually fly in sets of three for DF/triangulation purposes, carry COMINT and ELINT (Quick Look) systems;  they have a flight endurance of 4-5 hours, and can monitor radio communications in the 20-70 MHz, 100-150 MHz and 350-450 MHz frequency bands.[85]

Japan now has about 16 dedicated SIGINT-collection aircraft, half a dozen electronic warfare (EW) training aircraft with some ELINT capabilities, and 13 E-2C Hawkeye and four E-767 airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft with substantial secondary ELINT capabilities.[86]  In 2000-01, South Korea acquired four specially-equipped Hawker 800 SIGINT aircraft, containing both COMINT and ELINT sub-systems (with coverage of up to 40 GHz), together with an associated ground station for data processing.[87]

The Chinese Air Force operates four Tu-154M long-range transport aircraft modified for SIGINT collection.[88]  Another Tu-154M SIGINT aircraft is operated by China United Airlines (CUA), the commercial arm of the Air Force;  it uses civil markings (CUA B-4138), but was equipped in 1995 with a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) as well as COMINT and ELINT equipment for covert SIGINT operations.[89]  Taiwan has a SIGINT-equipped C-130H Hercules aircraft, operated by the 6th Electronic Warfare Squadron of the 20th EW Group, based at Pingtung Air Base on the southeast coast;  and two S-70C(M) Thunderhawk helicopters, operated by the Navy's 701 Squadron based at Hualien on the west coast.[90]

In Southeast Asia, Singapore acquired modest but sophisticated airborne SIGINT capabilities in the early 1990s.  Two of the Air Force's C-130H Hercules aircraft have been equipped with extensive suites of Israeli-supplied COMINT, ELINT and EW systems for strategic, operational and tactical SIGINT mission.[91]  They have been reported undertaking collection in Australia;  over the Andaman Sea and along the western coasts of Malaysia, Thailand and Burma, with stop-overs in Rangoon and Dhaka;[92]  and 'as far west as Pakistan'.[93]  Singapore also has six Fokker F-50 Maritime Enforcer Mark-2 maritime patrol aircraft, which are equipped with modern SIGINT systems, and which operate around Southeast Asian waters from the Andaman Sea to the South China Sea.  One of them is reportedly equipped with an ArgoSystems AR-7000 Black Crow SIGINT system, provided by Fokker, while the other five carry Israeli-supplied SIGINT systems.[94]  Since early 2001, Singapore has also been examining possible aircraft 'for an emerging requirement for a high-altitude ELINT/SIGINT platform'.[95]

Table 2

SIGINT aircraft, Asian countries