Former US Fighter Pilot Arrested for Training Chinese Military Personnel
The US Department of Justice announced the arrest of a former US Air Force fighter pilot suspected of training Chinese military personnel without authorisation.
Gerald Brown was arrested in Indiana, US, after recently returning to the United States from China, where he had been since December 2023, according to a statement from the Department of Justice.
The 65-year-old is accused of “conspiring with a foreign national to provide fighter aircraft training to pilots in the Chinese Air Force without the required license from the US State Department,” the statement said, as reported by news agency AFP, Thursday (26/2/2026).
FBI Director Kash Patel wrote on social media X: “Big news… the FBI and our partners have arrested a former US Air Force pilot suspected of training pilots in the Chinese military.”
Brown had a 24-year career in the US Air Force, where he “led sensitive units responsible for nuclear weapons delivery systems, led combat missions, and served as a fighter pilot instructor and simulator instructor on various fighter and attack aircraft.”
He retired from the military in 1996 and worked as a cargo pilot. However, he later began working as a US defence contractor, training pilots to fly advanced A-10 and F-35 fighter jets.
He allegedly began negotiating a contract in August 2023 with Stephen Su Bin – a Chinese national who was imprisoned in the United States for four years starting in 2016 for another espionage scheme – and travelled to China in December 2023 to begin his training work.
“The Chinese government continues to exploit the expertise of current and former members of the US armed forces to modernise China’s military capabilities,” said Roman Rozhavsky, an official in the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division.
“This arrest serves as a warning that the FBI and our partners will not stop until they hold accountable anyone who collaborates with our adversaries to endanger our military personnel and threaten our national security,” he added.
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