Washington: US authorities have arrested a former Air Force fighter pilot accused of training Chinese military personnel without official approval, the Justice Department said on Wednesday.

Gerald Brown, 65, was taken into custody in Indiana after returning from China, where he had been since December 2023, according to the department.

He is alleged to have “conspired with foreign nationals to provide combat aircraft training to pilots in the Chinese Air Force” without obtaining the required license from the US State Department.

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Brown served 24 years in the US Air Force, during which he “commanded sensitive units with responsibility for nuclear weapons delivery systems, led combat missions, and served as a fighter pilot instructor and simulator instructor on a variety of fighter and attack aircraft,” the statement said.

After retiring in 1996, he worked as a cargo pilot and later as a US defence contractor training aviators to operate the A-10 and advanced F-35 fighter jets.

Prosecutors say Brown began negotiating a deal in August 2023 with Stephen Su Bin, a Chinese national previously jailed in the United States for four years from 2016 in a separate espionage case, before travelling to China in December 2023 to start the training programme.

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“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 of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division.

“This arrest serves as a warning that the FBI and our partners will stop at nothing to hold accountable anyone who collaborates with our adversaries to harm our service members and jeopardise our national security,” he added.