SA’s links to US case against fighter pilot held for ‘helping Chinese military’

A developing case against an elite US fighter pilot, arrested on suspicion of “betraying” his country by providing defence services to the Chinese military without authorisation, has ties to South Africa.

Gerald Eddie Brown Jnr, a former US Air Force officer with the nickname “Runner”, was arrested in Indiana in the US on Wednesday, 25 February 2026, and was expected to make his first court appearance there on Thursday.

He is now part of a broader ongoing saga that hinges on the US accusing the Chinese People’s Liberation Army of targeting former military personnel from Western countries to bolster it.

Various related arrests in different countries have been carried out over several years.

Daily Maverick has reported before that the Test Flying Academy of South Africa (TFASA), based in the Western Cape town of Oudtshoorn and offering specialised aviation training, is caught up in the broader saga.

Read more: US ‘blacklists’ SA flight academy caught up in Chinese military training and security risk saga

While it has vehemently denied US accusations, TFASA has, up until recently, remained the target of serious allegations from the US, including that it has jeopardised US national security.

‘Betrayal’

In Brown’s case, he has decades of experience flying military aircraft.

The assistant director of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Roman Rozhavsky, said Brown “allegedly betrayed his country by training Chinese pilots to fight against those he swore to protect”.

Rozhavsky added: “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.”

According to a US Office of Public Affairs statement issued on Wednesday, the complaint against Brown included that in August 2023, he started arranging the terms of his contract to train Chinese military pilots.

He had allegedly used “a co-conspirator” to negotiate these terms with Stephen Su Bin.

‘Military data theft’ case and Australian arrest

Daily Maverick previously reported that Su Bin was detained in Canada in 2014 for stealing sensitive military data and was sent to the US to face related charges.

In 2016, he was sentenced to 46 months in jail in the US.

South Africa fits in here because TFASA previously acknowledged that it had ties to Su Bin.

It had said that a Chinese client introduced Su Bin to academy officials in 2009, and he had “facilitated a few test pilot courses in South Africa”.

According to TFASA, its relationship with Su Bin ended in 2013 – the year before his arrest in Canada – because of disagreements about work arrangements.

There are other links to South Africa.

On Wednesday, the US likened the charges that Brown now faces to those against a former US Marine Corps pilot, Daniel Edmund Duggan.

Duggan was arrested in Australia, where he has citizenship, in 2022.

Read more: US accuses ex-marine of conspiring with South Africans in Chinese military training saga

He faces extradition to the US, where he is charged in connection with money laundering, violating the Arms Export Control Act and a conspiracy involving defence services to China.

Other accusations that the US has made against Duggan include that he conspired with people in South Africa.

He has maintained that he is innocent.

Duggan, like Su Bin, had ties to TFASA – a spokesperson there previously told Daily Maverick that Duggan “undertook one test pilot contract” more than a decade ago,

TFASA has clearly been the focus of US authorities’ investigations into issues linked to Chinese military support.

‘Jeopardising US security’

Last month, the US Justice Department acted against the SA flying school.

According to a 15 January statement, it filed a forfeiture complaint against two “mission crew trainers” that were confiscated while in transit from TFASA to China’s People’s Liberation Army.

The statement described the “mission crew trainers” as “mobile classrooms” intended to help the army “train personnel on the use of airborne warning and control system and anti-submarine warfare aircraft”.

An image of the “mission crew trainer” image suggested the mobile classroom was set up in a shipping container.

According to US claims, the mission crew trainers and related software were designed and manufactured, using US-origin software and defence technical data, by TFASA.

The US alleged the purpose of this project was to train People’s Liberation Army aviators “on anti-submarine warfare techniques, expanding their capability to locate and track US submarines working in the Pacific”.

In January’s announcement, Rozhavsky made serious accusations, including that: “The Test Flying Academy of South Africa illegally exported US military flight simulator technology and recruited former Nato pilots for the purpose of training China’s military, jeopardising US national security and placing the lives of American service members at risk.”

John Eisenberg, the US Assistant Attorney-General for National Security, also alleged that “TFASA masquerades as a civilian flight-training academy when in fact it is a significant enabler of the Chinese air and naval forces”.

‘We did nothing wrong’

TFASA has categorically denied the US accusations.

“The company rejects any suggestion that Nato expertise was transferred, or that any US military technology, defence technical data, or other restricted information was exported in breach of applicable laws,” reads a company statement, which is now on its website’s home page.

“The containers in question were basic mobile classroom units and did not comprise or represent any form of tactical simulators, advanced systems or any classified, sensitive or mission-specific, tailored military training capabilities; they were limited to non-sensitive, procedural and instructional use, using publicly available and commercially licensed inputs.”

TFASA published a report on this aspect of the overall saga and said it was based on “an independent, fact-based investigation”.

‘Disrupting lawful business’

The TFASA said the report’s findings made it clear that the allegations against it were unfounded and that “their” (presumably the US’s) action “reflects a broader geopolitical context directed at disrupting lawful business activity conducted transparently and in good faith”.

The report says that in May last year, US representatives approached a manager assigned to the mobile classroom programme “at an airport in his home country”. (It is not clear where this was.)

Read more: SA flight school accuses US of harassing it in row over training Chinese military pilots

It says that during that incident, the US representatives showed a letter, purportedly from April 2025, alleging that “hacked software” from a US defence and aerospace manufacturer had been installed in computers in the units.

However, the report concluded that “the containers in question were basic mobile classrooms consisting only of custom desks” and commercial computers.

“There is no evidence of illegal software use or export violations,” it said.

“The licences in question were lawfully purchased and used in good faith, under the assumption of compliance, for the entire duration.” DM