U.K. on Alert as China Taps British Pilots to Help Train for War With West

The United Kingdom will move to outlaw the recruitment of ex-air force pilots by the Chinese military, an official said on Tuesday in a sharp caution to current and former service members.

An intelligence alert issued by the U.K.'s defense ministry said 30 British former pilots of the Royal Air Force (RAF) and other branches had been headhunted with larges sums of money to teach cadets in China, a program first flagged in 2019.

"We've approached the people involved and have been clear of them that it's our expectation they would not continue to be part of that organization," James Heappey, the U.K.'s armed forces minister, told Sky News. "We are going to put into law that once people have been given that warning it will become an offense to go forward and continue with that training."

Separately, Heappey told BBC Radio 4's Today program: "It certainly doesn't match my understanding of service of our nation—even in retirement—to then go and work with a foreign power, especially one that challenges the U.K. interest so keenly."

In a briefing to local journalists, the U.K.'s defense ministry said ex-RAF personnel contracted by the People's Liberation Army, some of whom were in their late 50s, had previous experience with fighter aircraft including Typhoons, Jaguars, Harriers and Tornados.

Beijing also was looking to court pilots who had operated the F-35, a Western official said. Britain has about four dozen of the mostly American-made fifth-generation stealth fighters, variants of which augment the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.

The Chinese military was offering employment packages worth up to $270,000, a Western official was quoted as saying. Pilots of other United States allies have also been approached, with one former Royal Australian Air Force pilot telling CNBC that he'd been offered nearly $1 million a year to work for the PLA.

Andrew Hastie, Australia's shadow defense minister, told Sky News Australia on Wednesday that he knew of at least two former fighter pilots who had been approached by China—both declined.

"I think what China's been doing over the last two decades is buying or stealing as much Western intellectual property as possible," Hastie said. "It's no surprise, therefore, that they should try to buy our military secrets as well by offering large sums of money to people who are our fighter pilots or work in any other critical area of our defense establishment."

Offers to teach members of China's armed forces were being delivered through third parties, said a Western official, who named the Test Flying Academy of South Africa as one apparently prominent intermediary.

The TFASA, founded in 2003, is a private, independent flight school, providing "very detailed and specific technical courses such as flight test instrumentation design and implementation, flight control systems design and evaluation courses," according to its website.

Advertisements for jobs in the "Far East" to instruct in fixed-wing and rotary aircraft suggested recruitment targeting military pilots with rich experience. As one of several companies in the market for ex-pilots, there was no indication that the TFASA had operated outside of the law in acting as a go-between.

The flight school's representatives could not be reached for comment and did not return multiple queries about the TFASA's role in recruitment or fresh exposure to its business in light of the U.K.'s national security concerns.

China's foreign and defense ministries did not return Newsweek's requests for comment.

Were the training to continue, it could give the PLA a leg-up as it prepares for what many consider to be a likely flashpoint in the future: a U.S.-China conflict over Taiwan, a war that's likely to involve some of America's closest allies.

As the Chinese military continues to modernize, it naturally would want to increase its operational knowledge about the West, said Hung Tzu-chieh, an assistant research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, Taiwan's top military think tank.

"Recruiting retired pilots helps the PLA develop its tactics," he told Newsweek.

"If the PLA has leeway to recruit British retired pilots from NATO warplanes, such as the Typhoon and Tornado fighter jets and the Harrier jump jet, since 2019, I won't be surprised if the PLA has already recruited retired pilots from other countries who are familiar with U.S. warplanes, such as the F-16 and F-18, to learn their tactics and capabilities," he said.

"After all, American fighters are their potential opponents."

China has its own fifth-generation stealth fighter in the J-20, but U.S. hardware is thought to retain the technical edge. Last month, General Kenneth Wilsbach, commander of the Pacific Air Forces, acknowledged "some recent close engagements" between Chinese J-20s and American F-35s in the region.

"It's not anything to lose a lot of sleep over," Wilsbach told reporters at an industry conference in September. "Certainly, we're watching them closely and seeing how they felt and how they operate them."

The Navy feels similarly about its superior capabilities vis-à-vis its Chinese counterpart, but that power gap may be closing in a hurry.

Last week, China's state broadcaster CCTV said J-20 fast jets "expelled" foreign aircraft approaching its "territorial airspace" in the East China Sea.

In remarks to Chinese Communist Party delegates last Sunday, President Xi Jinping, whose reforms have centralized his command over the military, reaffirmed his intention to accelerate the full modernization of his forces by 2027—the centennial of the PLA's founding—on their way to becoming a "world-class military" by 2049, the centennial of the People's Republic of China.

Bryce Barros, a policy analyst with the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States think tank, said Beijing's tapping of ex-RAF talent could undermine trust between Downing Street and the White House.

"If the recruitment is not stopped, it undermines trust and confidence in not only the U.S.-U.K. defense and intelligence-sharing alliance, but also undermines the underpinnings of the Five Eyes more broadly," Barros told Newsweek.

"The U.S. needs to work closely with not only its Five Eyes allies but also its NATO and Indo-Pacific allies and partners to ensure that former defense personnel that operates important U.S.-led weapons platforms are not being recruited to assist the PLA, too," he said.

"This is an area where defense, intelligence and security concerns between the transatlantic and the Indo-Pacific can and should be cooperated on to deny the PLA something it is trying to do."

Reached on Tuesday, State Department and Pentagon spokespersons referred further questions to the U.K.'s Ministry of Defense, which later said the recruitment "clearly erodes the U.K.'s defense advantage," and that it was "taking immediate steps to deter and penalize this activity."

A ministry spokesperson said previously that none of the recruited pilots had breached U.K. laws including the Official Secrets Act, the country's national security legislation to protect state secrets.

However, the ministry was reviewing the use of confidentiality agreements, its statement said, "with the aim of providing additional contractual levers to prevent individuals breaching security."

"It's obviously deeply worrying that ex-pilots are being headhunted to train the PLA, and it's absolutely right of the MOD to issue an intelligence alert," Chris Cash, director of the U.K.-based China Research Group think tank, told Newsweek.

"We hope that the necessary legal changes can be made through the National Security Bill—currently passing through parliament—to deter British citizens from assisting the military of a country we are on the verge of designating a 'threat' to our security," he said.

The bill is set to become an additional screening mechanism to prevent foreign influence from targeting members of parliament, government ministers, policy advisers, political candidates and others.