Word: radars
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Reading Others' Radar. If there had been some question at the outset whether the Pueblo might have violated North Korean waters, there was no such doubt about the EC-121. Its crew had orders to stay at least 50 nautical miles off the North Korean coast. Some wreckage from the aircraft turned up 85 miles at sea. Nixon insisted that American, Russian and North Korean radar had all shown the EC-121 clearly over international waters. His remark revealed for the first time that the U.S. has electronic gadgets that can read what other nations' radars are reporting...
...less spectacular type of spy plane is the slower patrol aircraft that measures radar capabilities and eavesdrops obliquely on enemy radio communications from a distance. The plodding, prop-driven EC-121 shot down by North Korean MIGs last week is a military version of the Super Constellation airliner. The EC-121 is an ungainly bird, its basically graceful lines awkwardly broken by wartlike plastic radar domes above and below the fuselage. Four piston engines give it a cruising speed of only 300 m.p.h., but it has immense range. It can fly 6,500 miles, staying aloft for more than...
...than that of a surface ship like Pueblo. Because many of the signals to be monitored travel in straight lines rather than bending with the earth's curvature, an airborne collector sees a much more distant horizon and can keep signals within range far longer. One EC-121 radar can sweep a 40,000-sq.-mi. area. The plane carries six tons of electronic gear and a crew of 31, large enough to allow technicians and translators to spell each other frequently at tasks that demand intense concentration...
...main sorts of data collected by aircraft of this type are "Comint," for communications intelligence, and "Elint," for electromagnetic intelligence. "Comint" primarily means verbal radio messages while "Elint" covers such nonverbal signals as radar, automatic landing aids and computer traffic. Since the early 1950s, EC-121s have flown the Atlantic and Pacific regularly as radar picket aircraft...
...Viet Nam and in North Korea, the planes have been used to eavesdrop on the enemy. They also plot the types and sites of radar installations and other electronic gear. They ply the Mediterranean, the Caribbean environs of Cuba and the entire East Asian coast from Viet Nam northward...