Arrested former fighter pilot friendly with man jailed for bid to hack US military secrets
A former US fighter pilot arrested in mysterious circumstances in NSW is believed to have been friends with a man later jailed for conspiring to hack US military secrets.
A former US fighter pilot arrested in mysterious circumstances in Australia is believed to have been friends with a man later jailed for conspiring to hack US military secrets.
Daniel Edmund Duggan, 54, arrested at the request of the US in the NSW town of Orange last month, had become friendly with Chinese-Canadian businessman Su Bin as early as 2010, a fellow pilot says.
Su, also known as Stephen Su and Stephen Subin, met a number of former US pilots who had taken on contract work in China, including Mr Duggan.
A former pilot friend of Mr Duggan’s told The Australian he also met Su in about 2009 or 2010 in China, and that Mr Duggan had talked about going into an export business with him.
“I first met Stephen at the same time as Dan around 2010, maybe 2009,’’ said the friend, who asked not to be named.
“I met him in China where I was doing a short contract flight instructing job. After that contract finished, Dan then started working with Stephen. I thought that was something aviation related, but I don’t really know. He was definitely looking at other opportunities in China with him.’’
Su was later jailed in Canada for working with two Chinese military officers to hack into defence contractors, including the US aviation giant Boeing, and stealing secrets relating to military aircraft, including the C-17 transport planes, which are also used in Australia.
Mystery charges
Mr Duggan was arrested days after the UK Ministry of Defence was embarrassed by British media reports of about 30 retired RAF fighter pilots accepting big pay packets from Beijing to train Chinese fighter pilots. His arrest, carried out by the Australian Federal Police at the request of the US government, was made for the purposes of extradition, but if there are charges pending against Mr Duggan in the US, they have not been made public.
The father of six was told he would be held the Goulburn Supermax prison pending extradition. His next court appearance is on Monday in the Downing Local Court in Sydney.
Following his arrest, Australia announced an inquiry to see if any of its former military pilots were being recruited to train Chinese military pilots.
The Australian has been told Mr Duggan was arrested as part of a co-ordinated effort by the Five-Eyes countries who share an intelligence pact: the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. It comes at a time of heightened tension between the West and an increasingly assertive China.
Mr Duggan, through his Australian lawyer Dennis Miralis, has strongly denied any wrongdoing, and Mr Miralis said, “he denies breaching any US law, any Australian law, and any international law.” The Australian is not suggesting Mr Duggan had any involvement with, or knowledge of, Su’s hacking activities. He will fight extradition.
Several people from Mr Duggan’s past who agreed to be interviewed on condition of anonymity spoke positively about him. One said he was a “nice man’’ while another described him as a “really good guy.’’ All were shocked at his arrest.
Military service
Mr Duggan, who spent 10 years in the US military including flying Harrier “jump jet’’ fighter planes, moved to Australia in the late 2000s, settling first in NSW. He met a Tasmanian woman, whom he later married, and relocated to the island state, building a farmhouse on a remote block outside the historic village of Richmond.
The pair had children, and Mr Duggan set up a business, Top Gun Tasmania, flying tourists and paying guests on joy flights in old former military aircraft, including the Chinese Nanchang CJ-6. The marriage broke down, the house was sold, and he gravitated towards China.
He also completed one contract with the controversial Test Flying Academy of South Africa, (TFASA), a South African company closely connected to China. He came into contact with Su around this time.
Chinese aviation
TFASA has denied claims it is acting as an intermediary for China’s People’s Liberation Army to recruit Western pilots to train its fighter pilots. It has withdrawn an advertisement it had published seeking test pilots to work for four years in an unnamed “Far East Asia’’ location.
The company is closely aligned with AVIC – the Chinese government-owned defence conglomerate Aviation Industry Corporation of China – which has been sanctioned in the US due to close ties with the Chinese military. AVIC was the company behind plans to establish an aviation hub in Solomon Islands as part of China’s “security pact’’ with the Pacific nation.
Australia’s Future Fund quietly divested its $5m shareholding in AVIC subsidiaries in November last year after it was revealed the company was supplying the brutal Myanmar junta with weapons.
Another related Chinese entity, AVIC International Flight Training Academy, known as AIFA, also spruiks connections to a company that causes deep concerns in Australia, COMAC.
The Chinese rival to Airbus and Boeing, COMAC, the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China, is tightly linked to the Chinese military and is thought to have been involved in espionage and theft of intellectual property. It is blacklisted by the US military.
Under the previous government, the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security (PJCIS) in March used a bipartisan report into foreign interference at universities to recommend then-foreign minister Marise Payne decide the future of a controversial $10m research and development contract between Monash University and COMAC.
A spokeswoman for Foreign Minister Penny Wong said this week the government “welcomes the report of the PJCIS and is carefully considering these recommendations.
“We will look to table a response as soon as possible”.
South African contact
On its website, AIFA said it was backed by AVIC-International.
“Test Flying Academy of South Africa (TFASA) is our other shareholder, a company with long and successful business relationships with AVIC-International and COMAC in China,’’ it says.
Through a spokesman, TFASA said it had never trained any Australian pilots, and had “zero Australians’’ working for it.
“Mr Duggan undertook one test pilot contract for TFASA in South Africa over 10 years ago. Since then TFASA has had no contact with Mr Duggan whatsoever. Mr Duggan never worked for TFASA in China,’’ the spokesman said. The company also said Mr Duggan had “absolutely no contact with AIFA”.
Move to China
By 2017, Mr Duggan was settled permanently in Beijing, where he is believed to have met another woman, and had a child. He talked about setting up a clothing export business with his partner.
A regular on the expat scene in Beijing, he hung out in the Chaoyang district, drinking in a dive bar named Godfathers, run by a Sydney couple. When the couple returned to Sydney, Mr Duggan and a group of unnamed friends bought the bar, renaming it The Flying Kangaroo, and it attracted pilots living or working in China.
In March 2017, Mr Duggan told expat blog Beijing Boyce that he’d decorated the bar with hundreds of aviation and motocross photos, and wanted to create a home-away-from-home vibe for pilots.
“As (a) side celebration, I’ll be having a few in honour of my new baby daughter, the newest Aussie expat and ‘flying joey’, who was born here in Beijing on February 22!” he told the blog.
The China-Australia Chamber of Commerce promoted an Australia Day after-party there in 2017, and noted the bar had been taken over by “two pilots and a motocross racer.’’ Su was not believed to be involved in the bar.
Su jailed
A Chinese citizen with Canadian permanent residency, Su was arrested in Vancouver in 2014, and later jailed for six years after pleading guilty to being involved in a plot to hack US military secrets. Two other men involved in the plot, but who were never indicted, were identified by the FBI as Chinese military officers.
While a number of retired Western pilots work in China’s booming aviation industry, Mr Duggan’s connections to Su are likely to have triggered the US interest in him. The pair each have a registered address in the same building in Caiman St in Chaoyang district.
Mr Duggan’s business Top Gun was wound up in about 2014, and later morphed into a business known as Swarm, which seemed to be selling small drones from a property in Port Melbourne, Victoria. Mr Duggan was not thought to have been involved in that business, and it later shut down.
By about 2018 or 2019, Mr Duggan was believed to be working for an aviation company doing crew resource management. Formerly known as cockpit resource management, CRM aims to improve communication between all flight personnel and ensure greater safety standards. He is also thought to have done some work with China Southern Airlines.
By 2022, he was back in Australia, travelling between a farm in Orange and what is thought to be a holiday home in Kiama.
Mr Miralis said Mr Duggan was a “proud Australian’’ citizen who no longer held US citizenship. He has complained about Mr Duggan’s treatment in prison and urged the US to halt its extradition process while the complaints were resolved.
Additional reporting: Remy Varga
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