China Sought Western Pilots With Knowledge of Stealth Fighters and Aircraft Carriers
Story by Alastair Gale • Yesterday 12:22 PM
China’s military sought to enlist veteran Western pilots into a program that aimed to improve its ability to fly planes from aircraft carriers, among other capabilities that could be useful in the event of a conflict with the U.S., including potentially over Taiwan, according to official documents, legal filings, emails and people familiar with the matter.
The program, some details of which were first revealed by the U.K. defense ministry in October, involved close collaboration between China and a South African flight academy that recruited former military pilots with expertise in areas where China’s military lags behind Western counterparts.
Managers at the school—in a remote South African community several hours’ drive from the regional capital Cape Town—targeted former military pilots from the U.K., Norway, France and other countries, according to people familiar with the program. The pilots, teaching less-experienced pilots at air bases inside China, stood to make hundreds of thousands of dollars annually working for just a few months a year, one of the people said.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-sought-western-pilots-with-knowledge-of-stealth-fighters-and-aircraft-carriers/ar-AA15haBI?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=92fba3797b574b27b1fa7158bb2fb74c
