American intelligence spy plane spotted near china

Newsweek analysis

A United States military aircraft designed to gather radar signals was detected flying deep in the contested South China Sea on Tuesday, publicly available flight data showed.

The Pentagon typically does not disclose specifics about its military operations, but a U.S. Air Force fact sheet says the Combat Sent collects "strategic electronic reconnaissance information" for decision makers in the U.S. military chain of command.

"Locating and identifying foreign military land, naval and airborne radar signals, the Combat Sent collects and minutely examines each system, providing strategic analysis for warfighters," the Air Force said, in a description of the platform's role in developing effective anti-radar countermeasures such as jamming.

The RC-135U, also known as the Combat Sent, probed the waters around the disputed Spratly and Paracel islands in a 10-hour flight from a major military hub in southwestern Japan, according to self-reported geodata recorded by the website Flightradar24.

The August 6 flight was first spotted by open-source intelligence analyst MeNMyRC1, a former RC-135 crew member and signals intelligence platform specialist. They said it was unusual for U.S. spy flights to be seen so far south in the South China Sea, while noting that the area often lacks enough ground receivers to pick up aircraft tracks.

The Combat Sent, which was deployed in late June from the continental United States to Kadena Air Base on the Japanese island of Okinawa, flew its latest sortie just after 6 a.m. universal coordinated time, or UTC, according to Flightradar24. It did not land until after 4 p.m. UTC the same day.

Flight records showed the Combat Sent has been deployed on suspected electronic intelligence-gathering flights at least 11 times since July 1, probing contested areas including just south of the North Korean border as well as near China's southernmost province of Hainan, home to one of the Chinese navy's aircraft carriers stationed in the South China Sea.