A former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot with more than 20 years of experience flying aircraft including nuclear delivery systems and the latest F-35 stealth aircraft has been arrested and charged with conspiring to support the Chinese military.
Gerald Eddie Brown Jr., 65, was arrested Wednesday in Jeffersonville, Indiana, and charged with violating the Arms Export Control Act by providing training to pilots for the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
“Providing U.S. military training to adversaries poses a serious threat to national security,” Lee Russ, director of special projects for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, said in a statement.
Brown served 24 years in the United States Air Force before retiring in 1996 with the rank of major.
“During his military career, Brown commanded a classified unit responsible for nuclear weapons delivery systems, commanded combat missions, and served as a fighter pilot instructor and simulator instructor for a variety of fighter and attack aircraft,” the statement said.
The statement said he flew a variety of jets, from Vietnam-era F-4 Phantoms to modern F-15s and F-16s.
After leaving the military, Brown flew commercial cargo planes and then joined two U.S. defense contractors as a flight simulator instructor training U.S. pilots to fly U.S. F-35 stealth fighters and A-10 attack planes, according to the statement.
The Lockheed Martin F-35 is one of America’s most advanced aircraft. As of the beginning of the year, there were approximately 600 fifth-generation jets in service across the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, and more than 1,600 on order, according to Flight Global’s World Air Forces 2026 report.
According to Lockheed Martin, 19 allied and partner nations are also participating in the F-35 program.
It is expected to be a mainstay in the fleets of the United States and its allies for decades to come.
Brown spent more than two years training People’s Liberation Army pilots in China, traveled there in December 2023 and remained there until earlier this month, according to a statement from U.S. prosecutors.
“On his first day in China, Mr. Brown answered three hours of questions about the U.S. Air Force, and on his second day he prepared and submitted a brief about himself to the People’s Liberation Army Air Force,” the statement said. The rest of the time was used to train Chinese pilots.
“Mr. Brown’s alleged betrayal exposes sensitive military tactics and threatens the security of our country, our military, and our allies,” said James Barnacle, the FBI’s assistant director in New York.
Peter Leighton, a former Australian Air Force officer and aviation analyst at the Griffith Asia Institute, told CNN that China could have learned a lot from Brown.
“If I were China, I would be most interested in the ‘nuclear delivery system’ and the tactics planned to deliver nuclear weapons,” Leighton said.
China may also have sought to learn what tactics F-35 pilots use to avoid detection in both attack attack and air defense roles.
And Layton said America’s allies and partners are likely to ask tough questions of the Pentagon.
“If I were an ally flying the F-35, I would insist very strongly that what the United States discovered was communicated to China, and that the changes in tactics and procedures that the United States is currently suggesting should be made,” Leighton said.
But Layton said that’s a possibility as a simulator instructor, and that Brown may just be training American pilots in basic flight techniques such as takeoff, landing and instrument flight.
“So there’s probably no tactics,” he said.
Karl Schuster, former director of operations at the U.S. Pacific Command Joint Information Center, said even gaining knowledge of these basic technologies could be helpful to China.
“An instructor pilot’s instincts during training and simulated combat flights can tell you a lot about his past training…and what tactics the instructor’s air force will employ in an interception or ‘air combat’ once engaged,” Schuster told CNN.
“Instructor insights add context to remotely collected technical intelligence-based information and open source materials. All of this blends together to build a very thorough and complete picture,” he added.
Brown was eager to train as a fighter pilot in China, the U.S. attorney’s statement said.
“In the resume he prepared for his application, Brown wrote that his ‘goal’ was ‘fighter pilot instructor,'” the newspaper said, adding that Brown later told a co-conspirator upon his arrival in China, “Now…I have a chance to fly again and teach fighter pilots!”
Asked about the matter at a press conference on Thursday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning declined to comment.
“I’m not familiar with the situation you mentioned,” Mao said.
Brown is said to have had contact with China through a co-conspirator who was in contact with Stephen Subin, a Chinese national who was sentenced to nearly four years in a U.S. prison after pleading guilty in 2016 to conspiring to provide classified U.S. military data and export data to China.
CNN anchor Jim Schuitt wrote about Su’s case in his 2019 book, “Shadow War: Russia and China’s Secret Operation to Defeat America,” and said Su and his partner stole tens of thousands of computer files related to F-22 and F-35 fighter jets.
Mr. Brown is not the first American aviator to be charged with helping train Chinese pilots, nor is he the first person with ties to Mr. Su.
Former U.S. Marine Corps pilot Daniel Duggan was indicted in 2017 on charges of violating the Arms Export Control Act, specifically for allegedly helping Chinese pilots train to fly aircraft carriers.
Mr Duggan, a naturalized Australian, was arrested in New South Wales in 2022 and his extradition to the US is pending.
He has denied the charges, insisting that U.S. officials were aware of his activities and that he was simply training commercial pilots to support China’s rapidly growing aviation sector.
According to a 2024 Reuters report, U.S. authorities discovered communications with Duggan regarding electronic devices seized from Su Bin, Duggan’s lawyer Bernard Collery said in a submission to Australian Attorney General Mark Dreyfus.
According to Reuters, extradition documents filed by the US in an Australian court say messages retrieved from Subin’s electronic devices show that Subin paid for Duggan’s trip from Australia to Beijing in May 2012. Mr. Collaly said Mr. Duggan did not know about Mr. Subin’s hacking activities, but knew Mr. Subin as an employment broker for a Chinese national airline at the time.
