BBC headline "Ex-UK pilots lured to help Chinese military, MoD says"
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-63293582
With more background info: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/is-china-really-using-...
Some highlights from the BBC article:
> Former British military pilots are being lured to China with large sums of money to pass on their expertise to the Chinese military, it is claimed.
> Up to 30 former UK military pilots are thought to have gone to train members of China's People's Liberation Army.
> The retired British pilots are being used to help understand the way in which Western planes and pilots operate, information which could be vital in the event of any conflict, such as over Taiwan.
> "They are a very attractive body of people to then pass on that knowledge," a Western official said. "It's taking Western pilots of great experience to help develop Chinese military air force tactics and capabilities."
The disclaimer sentence
> There is no evidence that any pilots have broken the Official Secrets Act or that they have committed any crime.
is funny - how would they gather that evidence without confessions from the pilots involved or from the Chinese? Even if they don't tell them any secrets, there remains the fact that they train them at all. With the next big conflict where this might be used being Taiwan, where the West has already taken the opposite side.
From the second link:
> The MOD also said that the United Kingdom is only one of several Western countries whose aircrew (and likely other sources of military expertise) are currently being targeted in this way. No details were provided of other nations involved.
Personally, reading this, I think the news is getting more ridiculous by the day. I think this is much worse, I don't think Saudi Arabia is likely to end up as a direct adversary, and even if it did it would not matter much. But China...
MI6 is a thing. What do you think they do all day. You really think these people with classified info in their heads are just walking around blabbing secrets in China or Saudi or wherever?
It's a manufacturing consent piece to setup this:
>Anyone working in the UK for “hostile” states like Russia and China who fails to register their role will face up to five years in jail, Suella Braverman will announce on Tuesday.
[0] https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/hostile-state-workers-...
With respect to Saudi's, a lot of Saudi of military is serviced/supported by Pakistanis who feeds info directly back to PRC. And TBH it wouldn't surprise me if PRC "lured" ex Japanese / Korean pilots for info as well.
This is exactly like Russian 'Foreign Agent' law introduced about 10 years ago. Should we be following in the footsteps of despotic regimes? If we have just declared that these regimes are morrally bankrupt, we should be doing the opposite?
> "The Pentagon has awarded a 48-million-dollar contract to train the nucleus of a new Iraqi army to Vinnell Corporation, a US firm which also trains the Saudi National Guard. The Fairfax, VA-based company, a subsidiary of the US aerospace firm Northrup Grumman, said on its website it was hiring former US army and marine officers to train infantry battalions and combat support units for the new Iraqi army. The Vinnell Corp. of Alexandria, Va., owned by politically connected Northrop-Grumman."
More on that:
https://www.corpwatch.org/article/iraq-vinnells-army-defensi...
It's just so painfully obvious that these kind of articles wouldn't be getting published right now if the US government wasn't angry with Saudi Arabia about crude oil production.
Were similar contracts in place for training Afghani Army? Maybe we should get a refund?
I found shocking how western media just declared Afghani army as incapable and closed the chapter. Someone was in charge of this program for 20 years. Someone had oversight of billions spend. Were western contractor facilitating corruption? Was this a shocking failure of western management?
The results are worse than Russian army procurement where millions of uniforms just go missing!
Training went well, but why would they bother once we're gone?
It seems to me that the timing is the point and it is more relevant now that the relationship has become more adversarial. No one would've been paying as much attention in 2009 and rightfully so since those relationships wouldn't have as much of a conflict of interest.
And let's not forget that in 2009, MBS had yet to order Jamal Khasoggi to be killed by being cut in half by a bone saw.
Context matters.
Ex-UK pilots lured to help Chinese military, MoD says https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-63293582
It would be more scandalous if they were to take jobs with Russia, or Iran. But Saudi Arable is a US ally, so what's the problem?
We don't live in the 19th century anymore so.
The key questions raised would seem to be: did they in fact obtain the required signoffs, and are the current requirements sufficient or do they need some adjustment?
You don't get official "signoff" when you're at that level. You get plausibly deniable permission with the understanding that the powers that be reserve the right to pull the rug out from under you should doing so be politically expedient.
Also just a comment, the dichotomy "they are free not slaves" is entirely useless to this discussion. There are countless examples from elsewhere in society of where a person isn't a slave but still has constraints on how they can earn money.
But then who has "really" been an ally since whenever? All sovereign nations have national interests, and they are not 100% allied with the US interests.
Still, in the case of Saudi Arabia, their most important security concern is Iran. And there, they are aligned with the US. Also, the US is the most important security partner of Israel, and, according to wikipedia [1], Saudi Arabia has quite a good working relationship with Israel
reports have surfaced in recent years indicating extensive behind-the-scenes diplomatic, intelligence, and security cooperation between the two as part of a larger Arab-Israeli alliance against Iran (see Iran–Israel proxy conflict and Iran–Saudi Arabia proxy conflict) and, more recently, Turkey under Erdoğan. At the same time, the Saudi relationship with the Palestinian National Authority is deteriorating.
Yes, I know about Kashogi. But those guys are not going there to tell MBS to kill more disidents. They are going there to give security advice. And that security advice will benefit the US, not hinder it, because it will result in a stronger ally, not a stronger enemy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Saudi_Arabia_re...
Truly late stage capitalism here.
This isn't at all surprising, why wouldn't you hire American military to go with your American military hardware?
Saudi pilots are routinely trained at American military flight schools like Fort Rucker and NAS Pensacola. The performance of these Saudi student pilots is usually terrible[1], by the way, to the point that it's a running joke in the American military aviation community. This is probably because their officers are selected based on having royal blood, not based on merit, whereas getting into flight school is highly competitive for Americans. I'm told that Saudi Arabia pays a lot of money to send these guys for training, so instructors aren't allowed to fail them. Basically, the instructors pencil-whip their progress and let them graduate, but then Saudi Arabia seems to really need some experienced Americans on-hand to keep things from going off the rails.
[1] I was paired with a Saudi during flight school. For example, all students had to score 100% on a written test on aircraft limits and emergency procedures before ever getting into the cockpit. American students would get a second chance if they got one or two questions wrong, but that was rare and embarrassing, and there would be no third chance. My Saudi partner, on the other hand, scored something like 16% on his first attempt and then received five or six more chances. When we actually got into the air, he wasn't much better. During the first week, I approached my commander and told him that I was uncomfortable flying with this guy, but he assured me that our instructors dealt with this situation all the time and knew how to manage it safely. Later in my career, I saw a bit of what happens behind the scenes and learned that cheating among Saudi students was also rampant and effectively allowed to continue.
To clarify the US is invoking terror on the Yemeni Iranian proxy forces and therefore the population.
https://www.vox.com/23166516/scandal-john-allen-brookings-th...
The court filing alleges that Allen had been tapped by two unregistered representatives of Qatar — a business executive named Imaad Zuberi and a former US ambassador to the UAE, Richard Olson — to advocate on Qatar’s behalf. (That Olson used the email address rickscafedxb@yahoo.com, a reference to the seedy Rick’s Cafe in the film Casablanca and the airport code for Dubai, might have been a tip-off that no one should be shocked that something was awry.)
Shortly after Olson left the State Department, several Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, launched a blockade against Qatar that sparked a massive spending spree in Washington on lobbying and other efforts to influence the US policy.
Olson, Zuberi and retired Marine four-star Gen John Allen traveled to Doha early in the diplomatic crisis to meet with top Qatari officials and discuss ways of resolving the issue, according to court records and a statement Allen’s spokesman provided to the wire service last year.
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/954208-ex-us-ambassador-to-...
Not all laws.[1]
> Legal acts do about as much to deter desertion and security leaks as speed limit signs keep people from speeding.
Seems to be working well so far.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_universal_gr...
This was (still is?) a classic of French influence in Africa, for instance.
Here my interpretation is that the US keep a close watch on the Saudis...
I’m not saying that there’s going to be a bunch of treasoning or anything, just that the laws you’re citing wouldn’t be particularly useful if said treasoning did happen.
I wouldn't be so sure. SA depends on the US for a significant amount of military equipment and training. They might turn over a US traitor if they got even a whiff of that help being threatened.
If they become an enemy, it doesn't hurt that we built their military and know everything about it inside out.
If the US could make every other country's military a subsidiary of the US military, they would.
What if you know it inside out and all it benefits you is that you now know they have a competent and robust organization, whereas before they were bungling idiots and you only kind-of knew the extent of it?
Maybe they would have otherwise been bungling and inept, but that is pretty poor planning to to just hope that your enemy is incompetent. The more likely scenario is they would be competent and you just wouldn't know anything about them.
A competent enemy you can predict is probably better than an incompetent one you can't. Better to know in advance exactly what competent thing they will do so you can anticipate it. Incompetent people can still get lucky and can hurt you when they act in ways you don't expect.
Once you get that star (or whatever the equivalent is for the navy) you are basically a US officer for life. Retired Generals and Admirals can and do get called upon by the government when they are needed. They are considered highly experienced professionals that the government can trust. They are not "in" the system, they are the system.
I would expect that the DoD keeps tabs on these officers. While the oil money may be nice, make no mistake, the US government is the wealthiest organization on the planet. These officers understand who the real provider is.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hong-kong-protesters-turn...
Having lived through this, it's a bit funny to me that most people aren't aware the Chinese crackdown on Hong Kong protests was led by British officers on the field. Inconvenient truths I guess.
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
OTOH - certain foreign governments paying top dollar to employ a bunch of military big shots from the U.S. does not say good things about their local talent pools. And the situation may look less-than-inspired to what talented young locals there are.
It depends. If it's just "talent" they're after, then sure. If they're after things that can only come from a US military big shot, then it's a different issue.
In other news, this is just another symptom of a shrinking US empire. Pax americana is starting to crumble.
But your comment is particularly funny because you brought up NATO [1]:
> One typical example is General Adolf Heusinger, a career military officer who, with the outbreak of the Second World War, became part of the German headquarters field staff and helped plan the Nazi invasions of Poland, Denmark, Norway, France and the Low Countries. The Nazis perpetrated against Poland one of the worst crimes history has ever known. Poland suffered the largest number of casualties per capita of any European country, with a total of about six million people killed. Heusinger rose quickly through the Wehrmacht’s administrative ranks and in 1944 was appointed Adolf Hitler’s Chief of the General Staff of the Army.
> With the 1955 establishment of the Bundeswehr, the reconstituted West German Armed Forces, Heusinger returned to military service, and was appointed Lieutenant-General in 1955. In 1957, he was promoted to full general and named the first Inspector-General of the Bundeswehr. He served in that capacity until 1961. In 1961, Heusinger was appointed Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, making him the senior military spokesperson for NATO and in 1963 he also became NATO’s chief of staff, serving in that capacity until 1964.
There were a number of other ex-Nazis in NATO's ranks and leadership.
Pax Americana is definitely crumbling before our eyes.
Saudi Arabia is not a U.S adversary, it is an ungrateful client state and has been since Roosevelt.
You mean Pax Israel is starting to crumble. Is it a coincidence that Yair Lapid is now advocating for a two state solution? They see the writing on the wall.