Former US Air Force Pilot Arrested for Allegedly Providing Combat Training to Chinese Military
The Chinese government is exploiting the expertise of former and current U.S. military members to modernize its own capabilities, said an FBI official.
A former U.S. Air Force pilot has been arrested and charged on suspicion of providing combat training to Chinese military pilots without requisite authorization, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a Feb. 25 statement.

Gerald Eddie Brown Jr., 65, was arrested Wednesday in Jeffersonville, Indiana, and charged with violation of the Arms Export Control Act.

“Since at least in or around August 2023, Brown willfully conspired with foreign nationals and U.S. persons to provide combat aircraft training to pilots in the Chinese Air Force, known as the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF),” the DOJ said.

The alleged training was a defense service under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, and Brown lacked the required license from the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls to provide the service to foreign military units, the statement said.

Brown served in the U.S. Air Force for more than 24 years, leaving active duty in 1996. During his tenure, Brown led combat missions, commanded sensitive units overseeing nuclear weapons delivery systems, and served as a pilot and simulator instructor for a wide range of aircraft, including the F-15, F-16, and A-10.

Most recently, he served as a simulator instructor for two defense contractors training U.S. pilots on flying the F-35 and A-10, the DOJ said.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/...9%2BqVvKPHpDfcU7g%3D

I.T.A.R. violation??? Sounds like Treason!

This guys life is in the shitter, and for what? Pennies on the dollar to put American lives at risk? While I think Chinese military aircraft are junk compared to our hardware, any advantage they get means potential death of our pilots during a major conflict. Prosecute, hang, and watch the left defend both he and his Chinese masters.

With something like this I wonder how many warnings he had along the way? I doubt it was inadvertent, with him not knowing it was forbidden.

I didn’t read all the articles, maybe it’s in there somewhere.

quote:

Originally posted by sourdough44:
With something like this I wonder how many warnings he had along the way? I doubt it was inadvertent, with him not knowing it was forbidden.

I didn’t read all the articles, maybe it’s in there somewhere.

You’d think that common sense would have been “Maybe I should check into this deeper before I get involved”.

But as an old coworker once said “Common sense isn’t too common anymore”.

The article says he left the USA, went to China for about 2 1/2 years, trained Chinese pilots in China, and came back to the USA.

That’s not an oops.

Yeah, this one is way more blatant than the story from several years back about British fighter pilots who got into hot water for providing instruction at a South African training company where some Chinese pilots went to train. That one at least had some arms-length deniability, versus blatantly traveling to China and providing direct instruction.

Hopefully this is an isolated incident vs. a "tip-of-the-iceberg" scenario.

If true, punishment needs to be swift and severe.

Bet you there’s much more of this happening than they’ll ever let on. Yikes

As anyone familiar with ITAR and training of foreign nationals,

Rule #1: DO NOT teach tactics.

This guy is a traitor, pure an simple.

Reading between the lines, I suspect what he was training the Chinese are those same tactics he learned while on active duty (duh) and said tactic can be extrapolated / boiled down to: he was teaching the chinese how to shoot down an American pilot during a dogfight and the Chinese, in-turn, would teach the Rooskies

When I broke this down to my wife (who's not savvy to the military air fighting ways) and she feels he heeds to be tried as a traitor and punished accordingly ("hung by the neck until dead")

Trial -> guilty verdict -> execution.

Seems pretty simple, but it won't happen like that at all.

quote:

Originally posted by flesheatingvirus:
Trial -> guilty verdict -> execution.

Seems pretty simple, but it won't happen like that at all.

Regrettably, we as a nation have charged few with Treason-- ever-- and have executed only one (Civil War era, and not a civilian court).

I don't say "regrettably" lightly.

quote:

Originally posted by DennisM:

Regrettably, we as a nation have charged few with Treason-- ever-- and have executed only one (Civil War era, and not a civilian court).

Uh, no.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

I see, Rosenberg's were charged with espionage, not treason, so you are correct.

quote:

Originally posted by DennisM:
we as a nation have charged few with Treason

Probably because treason is the only crime defined by the US Constitution and narrowly at that. Plus, the Supreme Court has defined the offense even further. Reportedly, the reason for its narrow definition was because the writers of the Constitution believed that the charge had commonly been applied overbroadly in Great Britain: “You said you didn’t like the King? Treason, and off with your head.”

What he did was treason in a traditional, generic sense, but as defined by US law?
Nope, and people must be charged with actual statutory crimes.

(This point has been discussed here many times in the past, and there are many good Internet explanations of what constitutes the offense.)

When are we going to start punishing these traitors with high treason?

quote:

Originally posted by heydrich:
When are we going to start punishing these traitors with high treason?

After the US Constitution is rewritten?
Along with getting rid of the protections of the First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments, among others—as the Left would love to see happen?

And is there a difference between high and low treason?

quote:

Originally posted by heydrich:
When are we going to start punishing these traitors with high treason?

When it fits the narrow legal definition of treason.

See the post above yours.


Treason is defined in the US Constitution as engaging in war against the US, or providing aid or comfort to an enemy of the US.

Enemy as further defined in the US Code requires a declaration of war in most cases, and at a minimum being engaged in active hostilities in other cases.

He did not himself engage in war against the US, and China is not a formal enemy of the US under the law at this time, so his aid to them doesn't fit within this strict constitutional definition of treason.


But what he did do is violate ITAR defense articles/services export laws, which is a crime, and is what he's charged with.


Similar to how the abovementioned Rosenbergs couldn't be charged with or convicted of treason, since the USSR wasn't a legally defined enemy of the US during the Cold War due to a lack of a formal war declaration or open hostilities. But they instead were charged with and convicted of espionage, and executed for it.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
And is there a difference between high and low treason?

Not anymore.

Previously in history, "high treason" was betraying your country or more specifically your sovereign/monarch. Whereas "petty treason" was betraying your social superior, typically by killing or trying to kill them, such as a servant murdering his master or a wife trying to kill her husband.

Nowadays all modern legal references to treason are to what used to be termed high treason - betraying your country.

Okay, thanks. That was something I did not know.

Time to consider brining back hanging if convicted of treason, espionage or waging war against the United States.