Former Air Force pilot and instructor accused of training Chinese pilots in American systems and tactics

On Wednesday, former U.S. Air Force Major Gerald “Runner” Brown was arrested in Jeffersonville, Indiana. He was charged with “providing and conspiring to provide defense services to Chinese military pilots without authorization, in violation of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA).”

His arrest came after he spent the last two years in China, where he’s alleged to have worked directly with the People’s Liberation Army, sharing American secrets and training Chinese pilots to fight his own former peers in the sky.

If war were to break out between the United States and China any time in the near future, this alleged betrayal of his oath could even constitute treason.

During his 24-year career with the Air Force, Brown – who is 65 years old now – trained pilots to fly the F-4 Phantom II, F-15 Eagle, F-16 Fighting Falcon, and the A-10 Thunderbolt II. He commanded units tasked with delivering nuclear weapons, led operational combat missions, and, after leaving the Air Force, served as a contracted simulator instructor for current A-10 and F-35 pilots.

Then, around August 2023, an intermediary put Brown into contact with a man who goes by the name Stephen Su Bin. In 2014, Su Bin was convicted of stealing hundreds of thousands of files from American defense contractors pertaining to aircraft like the C-17 Globemaster III, F-22 Raptor, and F-35 Lightning II. Bin’s e-mails with his Chinese handlers made it clear that the goal was to steal technology related to advanced American aircraft to “stand easily on the giant’s shoulders.”

Su Bin was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison, and upon his release, seems to gotten right back to work, recruiting assets within the American Defense apparatus for further intelligence gathering.

In communications between Brown, Su Bin, and at least one other co-conspirator, Brown is said to have repeatedly stated his intent to train Chinese pilots in combat operations, where he voiced his excitement over having the chance to “fly and instruct fighter pilots again!” The unnamed co-conspirator told Brown that he hoped the American would be assigned to his base, but otherwise he’d be assigned to what was described as the “Chinese equivalent to Air Force Weapons School” – which is roughly equivalent to the Navy’s famous “Top Gun.” That is to say that Brown would be directly training elite Chinese fighter pilots on American air-to-air tactics.

A Chinese Chengdu J-10 fighter jet, August 2017. (Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation)

In December 2023, after roughly four months of negotiating his contract, Brown left the United States for China, where he allegedly spent the following two years working directly with the People’s Liberation Army Air Force before returning to the United States in February 2026.

“Gerald Brown, a former F-35 Lightning II instructor pilot with decades of experience flying U.S. military aircraft, allegedly betrayed his country by training Chinese pilots to fight against those he swore to protect,” FBI’s Assistant Director of Counterintelligence and Espionage Division Roman Rozhavsky said.

The indictment states that Brown left active duty in 1996, which suggests that he spent at least a fair portion of his 24 years in a reserve capacity, simply because of how the dates line up.

Based on the available information, it’s likely that Brown was commissioned as a second lieutenant at age 21 or 22 in the early 1980s, and left active duty to transition to the reserves in 1996, after 14 to 15 years in service. He likely maintained that reserve status for the subsequent decade, but probably didn’t spend enough time on active duty orders or attending drills to earn sufficient points toward a formal retirement; hence the Justice Department calling him a “former” fighter pilot, rather than a retired one.

Upon his separation, Brown first found work as a commercial cargo aircraft pilot, before more recently, accepting a role as a contracted simulator instructor for A-10 and, perhaps, most concerningly, F-35 pilots.

While Brown did work as a simulator instructor for America’s most advanced fighter in service today, his real-world experience with the F-35 seems to be rather limited.

Notably, there is some variety in the type of simulators employed by the U.S. Air Force, ranging from desktop setups not all that dissimilar from a home gaming rig, to massive, integrated virtual environments meant to simulate nearly every aspect of real-life flying. Some of these simulators are so classified that outsiders aren’t even allowed to take pictures of them.

A U.S. Air Force F-15 Strike Eagle flies over the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, Feb. 10, 2021. The F-15E Strike Eagle is a dual-role fighter designed to perform air-to-air and air-to-ground missions. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech Sgt. Sean Carnes)

Without knowing what type of simulator Brown was contracted to work with, it’s hard to say exactly how deep his knowledge of the F-35 may go. But as a respected former pilot instructor, it is reasonable to think he may have had much deeper access to the fighter’s (at least simulated) capabilities than Uncle Sam would prefer. However, with no seat time in the aircraft itself, it seems likely that Brown’s instructing on the F-35 could have been limited to simple tasks like take-off, landing, flying on instruments, and other basics.

The technical implications of Brown’s alleged betrayal are hard to nail down. Despite his extensive experience in still-operational older platforms, these aircraft have seen pretty significant upgrades and changes since his departure from active service in 1996. The F-15, F-15E, and F-16 fleets, for instance, have all undergone radar modernization programs since then, replacing their legacy pulse-Doppler radar arrays with much more powerful and sophisticated active electronically scanned arrays.

The Air Force’s F-16s underwent the Common Configuration Implementation Program starting in 2002, which was described at the time as “the most extensive retrofit of the F-16 and involves major changes to the aircraft avionics and cockpit.” It wasn’t until 2003 that both F-15 and F-16 fleets started seeing the integration of the Joint Helmet-Mounted Cueing System (JHMCS), and while some F-15s did have Joint Tactical Information Distribution System terminals installed prior to Brown’s departure, that capability wouldn’t mature into the Link 16 Multifunctional Information Distribution System we know today until later in the decade, and wouldn’t become prevalent in F-15Es or F-16s until the early to mid 2000s.

The A-10 Thunderbolt II also saw significant changes after Brown’s time, with the Precision-Engagement modification beginning in 2005 that allowed for the integration of precision-guided munitions and the requisite targeting pods necessary to employ them effectively.

The same is true for the weapon systems these aircraft employ. For example, the revolutionary JDAM, or Joint Direct Attack Munition, that turned old-fashioned gravity bombs into GPS-guided pinpoint killers, didn’t reach initial operating service until two years after Brown dropped his uniform. And then, of course, there’s advanced electronic warfare systems like the F-15E and F-15EX’s Eagle Passive/Active Warning & Survivability System and the F-16’s AN/ALQ-257 Integrated Viper Electronic Warfare Suite (IVEWS), both of which only started to come online in 2025.

A formation of four U.S. Air Force F-15EX Eagle II fighter jets, assigned to Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, fly over the Gulf of America, November 21, 2025. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Blake Wiles)

But then there’s “tacit” combat knowledge, or experiential expertise derived from more than two decades in the cockpit, and that could be the real problem. Even if Gerald Brown never shared a single classified detail with the Chinese military, providing advanced pilot training is, in itself, a direct form of capability transfer. Brown could have shown Chinese fighter pilots how Americans think about the fight; plan their operations; brief their plans; and execute them. This would make Chinese fighter pilots more proficient than they otherwise could be and they would acquire a newfound understanding of American tactics, techniques and procedures (or TTPs). This understanding could be used to interfere with or mitigate the efforts of American forces in an actual fight.

Brown’s experience with things like how fighters integrate with airborne warning and control aircraft, how they go about meeting up with tankers near contested environments, even simple formation logic that could be gleaned from publicly available texts, become much more valuable to the Chinese military when shared through the cooperative scope of a seasoned American veteran whose been employing them for decades.

“The instructor insights add context to the remotely collected technical intelligence-based information and open-source materials. You can build a very thorough and complete picture by fusing all that together,” retired Navy Captain and former director of operations at the U.S. Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center, Carl Schuster said.

Most damning of all, Brown’s experience commanding units tasked with delivering nuclear weapons could provide Chinese military analysts with unique insights into how a nuclear war might play out, potentially creating opportunities to counter American strategy if such a fight were ever to occur.

Brown is not the only Western, or even American, pilot to trade his country’s secrets for a Chinese payday. In October 2022, the British Ministry of Defence released a report highlighting as many as 30 former Royal Air Force pilots had been contracted to train Chinese aviators. According to that report, pilots were offered pay packages of up to $270,000 for their services. Astoundingly, the Ministry of Defence concluded at the time that doing so was not a violation of any current U.K. law, but ti was nonetheless trying to deter pilots from doing so.

Related: Is TikTok spying on you and sending your information to China?

That same year, a former U.S. Marine AV-8B Harrier instructor pilot named Daniel Edmund Duggan was arrested in Australia after training Chinese naval aviators between 2010 and 2012 via a shell company called the “Test Flying Academy of South Africa.” Duggan has continued to dispute these charges. Yet, it’s worth noting that he once shared a mailing address in Beijing with a Chinese national who also paid for his transportation from Australia and scheduled Chinese fighter pilots for Duggan to train – and that Chinese was Su Bin…

Brown is the first Western pilot since Duggan to be charged with such a crime, but it’s clear that Chinese efforts continued throughout.

In June 2024, the United States, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand published a joint bulletin calling out China’s continued efforts to recruit former NATO aviators just like Brown.

“The PLA is using private companies in South Africa and China to hire former fighter pilots from Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States, and other Western nations to train PLA Air Force and Navy aviators. The PLA wants the skills and expertise of these individuals to make its own military air operations more capable while gaining insight into Western air tactics, techniques, and procedures. The insight the PLA gains from Western military talent threatens the safety of the targeted recruits, their fellow service members, and U.S. and allied security,” the report said.

Gerald Brown has been charged with a willful violation of the Arms Export Control Act, or AECA, which can come with a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison or $1,000,000 in fines. He is also charged with both “providing and conspiring to provide” defense services to the Chinese military.

Feature Image: Mugshot of Major Gerald “Runner” Brown. (Creative Commons)

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