Fx Red 리트윗함
Retired Air Force fighter pilot Gerald Brown, who was accused of teaching American tactics to 🇨🇳 airmen, drove erratically to avoid an FBI tail, kept a fake passport, and deleted messages from foreign pilots to cover his tracks.
Brown sold state secrets to China between late 2023 and his arrest on Feb 25. He planned to retire in Asia after several years on a $250,000 annual salary teaching 🇨🇳 military pilots, which he also hoped would give him a chance of “going fast again and pulling g’s.”
Brown, who worked on an F-35 simulator program in the US before moving to China, is accused of betraying secrets that included US dogfighting techniques and tactics to suppress air defenses. From a PLA Air Force base in northern China, Brown taught local pilots, held briefings on US capabilities, and eventually helped spy on American airmen in South Korea.
Brown was recently released from a US jail on a $200,000 bond and placed under house arrest, including GPS and video surveillance, at his sister’s home in Minnesota.
𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗖𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝗲 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀
Brown, whose pilot callsign was “Runner,” left the Air Force in 2007 after a 24-year career. He eventually sought work in China after being fired from two post-retirement jobs in US aviation.
He was first terminated from a flying job with UPS “due to a complaint that he caused a physical altercation in 2016 while in the cockpit” mid-flight. He later worked as an F-35 simulator instructor for a defense contractor, but was fired in 2023 after a commander’s inquiry found he had sexually harassed female airmen.
In late 2023, eager to fund his dream of retiring overseas, Brown turned to Stephen Su Bin, a Chinese businessman whom Brown characterized as a “master spy”.
Brown was paid more than $18,000 per month — plus benefits, including a Thailand vacation — after going to work for the Chinese company Stratos Aviation. US intelligence has accused the business of hiring Western and NATO pilots to exploit their tactical knowledge.
Brown was motivated in part by a desire to get behind the controls of a fighter jet one last time. In encrypted messages obtained by the FBI, Brown initially offered to serve as a simulated adversary, known as “Red Air,” for Chinese pilots, a role that would put him back in a cockpit.
“I have been researching the jets, J-11 is awesome!! Watched a J-10 interception on a Canadian airplane,” Brown wrote to one of Su Bin’s other pilots. “I cannot stop thinking about flying.”
Brown was arrested in late Feb, weeks after returning to the US in an apparent bid to sell a condo he owned in Indiana. He lied to US customs that he had been working overseas as a commercial airline consultant.
Though Brown never flew an F-35 during his Air Force career, his role running the simulator would have made him privy to the same closely guarded secrets as the pilots of those 5th-generation stealth fighters.
“This guy held the ‘keys to the jet’.” A former fighter pilot and simulator instructor could demystify Western behavior in ways surveillance alone cannot.
“Everyone’s always observing everyone else, but sometimes you don’t get the full picture or you misinterpret. So him being in there and actually being able to teach and talk through their tactics and give them feedback, I think is pretty significant.”
‘𝗕𝗿𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿. 𝗗𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗹𝘆.’
In China, Brown worked at a major PLAAF training base in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, and taught courses on electronic warfare and how to suppress enemy air defenses. However, his activities on China’s behalf weren’t limited to teaching.
In May 2024, Brown traveled to South Korea, where he had previously worked as an A-10 simulator instructor, to meet with US Air Force personnel and furtively collect documents that Chinese military intelligence wanted to read. When he returned to China, Brown was debriefed by Chinese officials and turned over his electronic devices for them to exploit.
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taskandpurpose.com/news/fighter-p…
Byron Wan@Byron_Wan
“Gerald Brown, a former F-35 Lightning II instructor pilot with decades of experience flying US military aircraft, has betrayed his country by training Chinese pilots to fight against those he swore to protect.” nypost.com/2026/02/25/us-…
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