A jet is more conspicuous and arguably a bigger offense, China also does not have jets with the required range or service ceiling. SIGINT is valuable even if y

A jet is more conspicuous and arguably a bigger offense, China also does not have jets with the required range or service ceiling. SIGINT is valuable even if you can’t decrypt the contents, in fact when you can it’s usually COMMINT. SIGINT provides you with other valuable information such as frequencies used, cadence and also allows you to uncover new locations of forces and installations. Also governments still use a lot of unencrypted or partially encrypted communications - cellphones are a great example even if voice and data is encrypted the cell ID and other valuable metadata isn’t.