Two mobile classrooms for training airborne warning crews that were shipped from South Africa to China have been intercepted by the US.
The US Justice Department says the two shipping container-sized classrooms were flight simulators which contained US military technology and would have been used to train Chinese air force crews to detect and track US submarines in the Pacific.
The classrooms were shipped from the Test Flying Academy of South Africa (TFASA) which “masquerades as a civilian flight-training academy” says US Assistant Attorney General (national security) John Eisenberg.
“It is, in fact, a significant enabler of Chinese air and naval forces and a pipeline for transferring NATO aviation expertise, operational knowledge, and restricted technology to the People’s Liberation Army.”
CLASSROOMS USED US SYSTEMS
The department says court documents show that the mobile classrooms and software used US software and defence data; their layout was modelled on the Boeing P-8 Poseidon, which is the main anti-submarine patrol aircraft for the US, Australia and New Zealand.
TFASA “illegally exported US military flight simulator technology” and recruited former NATO pilots to train China’s military… says FBI Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky (Counterintelligence and Espionage).
The US government says TFASA is a South African company that specialised in military flight testing and training, founded in 2003 with the support of the South African government to co-operate with China in training their military to NATO standards.
The classrooms were designed to run software specially designed by TFASA, the US department says.
The software used a basic flight simulator program from a US company which TFASA software engineers enhanced using technical data about western anti-submarine warfare aircraft, including the Poseidon.
Former NATO crew trained in anti-submarine warfare techniques were part of TFASA’s project team, the US says.
It noted that China, Russia, and Iran began a week of joint naval exercises in South African waters earlier this month.
