US Opens Forfeiture Case on 2 Anti-Submarine Trainers Bound for China

DOJ said the mission crew trainers were designed and manufactured by the Test Flying Academy of South Africa (TFASA), which was added to the Commerce Department's Entity List in 2023 for providing training to Chinese military officers using U.S. and NATO sources (see 2407020010). John Eisenberg, DOJ's assistant attorney general for National Security, said the TFASA "masquerades" as a civilian flight-training academy when it actually is a "pipeline" for the transfer of restricted technology to China.

That includes the mission crew trainers, which DOJ said are "mobile classrooms" meant to help the Chinese military train officers on "airborne warning and control system and antisubmarine warfare aircraft." The agency said the trainers were made using U.S.-origin software and defense technical data, and they were bought by TFASA from an unnamed U.S. company and shipped to South Africa without the required license from the Bureau of Industry and Security. The entity then incorporated U.S.-origin defense technical data into the software, making it subject to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations.

As a result, the [mission crew trainers] were defense articles intended to provide a defense service (i.e., training of the PLA, a foreign military)," the complaint said.

The complaint said multiple export control violations likely occurred at several points during the transfer of the crew trainers and the software, including when TFASA's "co-conspirators" exported the flight simulation software from the U.S. to TFASA without a BIS license, and when the trainers, after being "enhanced" with ITAR-controlled defense technical data, were exported and reexported to China without a license from the State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls.

TFASA's co-conspirators bought the flight simulation software by transferring funds from a place outside the U.S. to the U.S. company’s bank account, the complaint said. DOJ said those payments also violated U.S. law because they were "made to promote a specified unlawful activity," including violations of the Arms Export Control Act.

DOJ added that the purpose of TFASA's project, which it called “Project Elgar," was to train Chinese military aviators on anti-submarine warfare techniques, "expanding their capability to locate and track U.S. submarines working in the Pacific," DOJ said. The layout of the trainers was modeled after the P-8 Poseidon, DOJ said, an anti-submarine warcraft made by Boeing that serves as the U.S.'s main "anti-submarine warfare maritime patrol aircraft."

The trainers used a basic flight simulator program designed and marketed by a U.S. company, which TFASA software engineers then "enhanced using technical data relating to Western anti-submarine warfare aircraft, including the P-8 Poseidon," the agency said. "Former NATO aviators with training in anti-submarine warfare techniques were part of TFASA’s Project Elgar team."

The complaint also said TFASA employees for years have known they were subject to export controls as a result of the organization's addition to the Entity List. DOJ said employees have discussed the “fuzzy grey line” between what is legal and illegal business, including specifically about Project Elgar possibly “crossing ITAR boundaries.”

Around February 2022, one TFASA employee "called attention" to a U.S. export control warning on a U.S. company's website that was advertising the flight simulation software, the complaint said. The employee "specifically noted that the FS Software was subject to U.S. export control laws, which would limit the entities that TFASA could provide it to," DOJ said.

In another instance, when TFASA in 2023 tried to buy a training aircraft for a military training course using financing from another South African company, that company told TFASA it was "withdrawing financial support" for the project because of U.S. laws. A director for Livingston Aerospace, a U.K. company added to the Entity List in 2024 for its ties to TFASA, messaged an employee at TFASA with the news and said: "This just in. F#@ck. B@st@rd ‘Americans [sic]. Any suggestions mist [sic] welcome. I say again, fuck!!”

The U.S. claimed that the property is subject to forfeiture as "property involved in a transaction or attempted transaction in violation of" U.S. export controls under the Arms Export Control Act.

(United States v. Two Shipping Containers With Identification Numbers NONU1047916 and NONU9097390 and Any Items Contained Therein, D.D.C. # 26-00120)