Jeffersonville, Indiana - The Justice Department announced the arrest on Wednesday of a former Air Force fighter pilot who allegedly trained Chinese military personnel without authorization.

Gerald Brown (65) was arrested in Indiana after having recently returned to the US from China, where he had been since December 2023, a DOJ statement said.

He is accused of having "conspired with foreign nationals to provide combat aircraft training to pilots in the Chinese Air Force" without a required license from the State Department, the statement said.

"Major story... the FBI and our partners have arrested a former US Air Force Pilot who was allegedly training pilots in the Chinese military," FBI Director Kash Patel posted on X.

Brown had a 24-year career 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."

He had retired from the military in 1996 and worked as a cargo pilot, the statement said, but he later began a role as a US defense contractor training pilots to fly the A-10 and state-of-the-art F-35 fighter jets.

He allegedly began negotiating a contract in August 2023 with Stephen Su Bin º a Chinese national who was imprisoned in the US for four years beginning in 2016 over an espionage scheme – and traveled in December 2023 to China to begin his training job.

"The Chinese government continues to exploit the expertise of current and former members of the US armed forces to modernize China's military capabilities," said Roman Rozhavsky, an official with 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 jeopardize our national security," he added.