The United States has arrested and charged a former US Air Force fighter pilot for allegedly training China’s military, the Justice Department said on 26 February.
Gerald Eddie Brown Jr., 65, a former F-35 Lightning II instructor pilot, was arrested on Wednesday in Jeffersonville, Indiana. He is charged with providing and conspiring to provide defence services to pilots from China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force.
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Brown previously commanded sensitive units responsible for nuclear weapons delivery systems. Prosecutors said he began negotiating a contract around August 2023 to train Chinese military pilots.
The Justice Department said he negotiated with Su Bin, a Chinese national who was sentenced in 2016 to four years in a US prison for conspiring to hack computer networks at Boeing and other major US defence contractors.
According to the department, Brown travelled to China in December 2023 and remained there until February before returning to the United States.
Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division said Brown “betrayed his country by training Chinese pilots to fight against those he swore to protect”.
China’s embassy in Washington declined to comment.
The case comes as President Donald Trump is expected to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in the coming weeks. Trump has sought to ease tensions in an ongoing trade dispute between the two countries.
At the same time, military and technological rivalry between Washington and Beijing has continued to grow. US and allied officials have warned that China has been recruiting current and former Western military personnel, including pilots, to help the People’s Liberation Army improve its air combat capabilities.
Officials say these efforts often involve lucrative contracts and offers to fly Chinese aircraft.
In 2023, the US Commerce Department sanctioned more than a dozen companies in China and other countries, including Kenya, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates. The sanctions were linked to efforts to recruit Western military personnel for Chinese aviation training.
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Adapted by ASEAN Now · Source · 26 Feb 2026
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