US charges former F-35 pilot for training China's air force

WASHINGTON, Feb 26 (Reuters) - The U.S. ‌has arrested and ​charged ​a former U.S. Air Force fighter jet pilot with allegedly training China's military, highlighting Beijing's persistent efforts to modernize its armed forces by siphoning ‌off U.S. secrets.

Gerald Eddie Brown, Jr., a former F-35 Lightning II instructor ⁠pilot who had commanded sensitive units with responsibility for nuclear weapons delivery systems, was arrested on ‌Wednesday in Jeffersonville, Indiana, and charged ‌with "providing and conspiring to provide" defense services to Chinese military pilots, the Justice Department said.

Beginning around August 2023, Brown began negotiating the terms of his contract ​to train China's People's Liberation Army Air Force pilots with Su Bin, a Chinese national who was sentenced to four years in a U.S. prison in ⁠2016 for conspiring to hack into the computer networks of Boeing and other major U.S. defense contractors.

Brown, 65, traveled ​to China in December 2023, remaining there until returning to the U.S. in February, the department said in a statement.

Brown "betrayed his country ​by training Chinese pilots to fight against those ‌he swore to protect," Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky of the FBI's Counterintelligence and Espionage Division said.

China's embassy in Washington declined to comment.

President ⁠Donald Trump, who is set to meet China's leader Xi Jinping on a visit to the country in coming weeks, has sought to lower tensions in an ongoing trade war ⁠between the two rivals.

Behind the trade detente, however, is an escalating military and technological rivalry that many observers ​deem to be a new form of cold war.

The U.S. and allied countries have warned that China has been actively recruiting current and former Western military personnel, including dozens of pilots, ‌to train the PLA to counter Western air combat tactics, often luring them with lucrative contracts and opportunities to fly exotic Chinese ‌aircraft.

The U.S. Commerce Department in 2023 sanctioned more than a dozen companies in China, Kenya, ⁠Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand, ‌the UK and the ​United Arab Emirates for their roles in recruiting Western military talent for PLA aviation training.

(Reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Don Durfee and ‌Andrea Ricci )

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