In message , a425couple
writes
"Paul J. Adam" wrote...
If you think worst-case, ditching or baling out offers the Chinese a
nasty option. "We picked up nine of the crew, here they are. Mission
Supervisor Snuffy, who knows all about what the aircraft can do and
what its mission was? No, haven't found a trace of him, but we're
still searching..." And who's to know different? Once the crew lose
sight of each other, there's no way to know whether Supervisor Snuffy
died during the bailout, drowned in the ocean, is on a slow fishing
boat with no comms on his way to port, or is being forcibly persuaded
to be detailed and explicit about EP-3 capabilities in a Beijing basement.

Very interesting valid point of view, thanks.

I certainly admit that I do not know what 'equipment' and
software was destroyed and what was still discoverable.
I'm also not sure how knowledgable the crew was!

They for sure knew enough to deal with "Drop everything, we've got the
Premier's private phone!" or similar prioritisation: they'd know what
they could and could not get, what they were tasked to receive, what
they'd been ordered to be alert to "just in case", and so on.

For example, in WWII it was policy that nobody who
had knowledge of important secrets should ever be allowed
in areas where it might be possible to be captured.

Depends on the compartments. You have to hit the balance between
protecting your secrets, and achieving the mission.

The crew are the real prize which could compromise the capability:

Are you really sure about that?

Utterly certain? No.

Pretty confident? Yes.

Knowing how to use a computer program, does not
at all mean, you know the program. Or the equipment
that runs the program.

But you know what you're listening to, what can be cracked and
translated aboard, what has to be recorded for later analysis, what the
priorities and orders for the mission were, what the aircraft can and
can't achieve.

For a slightly forced armour analogy: the gunner doesn't know how the
code in the ballistic computer runs and couldn't rewrite it from memory.
But, with the computer properly trashed, the gunner is the person who
potentially could be made to say what he can and can't hit in various
circumstances, aided by whatever radar pixies dance inside the little
boxes. "How do we copy that?" is one risk: "Dear God, we never knew they
were that good" is another; and exposing "Is *that* the best they can
actually do?" a third.

--
He thinks too much, such men are dangerous.

Paul J. Adam