China poaching our ex Pilots

[tescorank]

I wonder how long before the Chinese attempt to take over the World.

Why can we not stop their pensions as the first deterrent?

https://news.sky.com/story/chinas-armed-forces-rec...
China's armed forces recruiting dozens of British ex military pilots in 'threat to UK interests'

[peterperkins]

Ex military will have signed the official secrets act etc and you would hope had the sense to not divulge secret stuff.

Of course they have highly sought after flying skills which would be valuable and possibly lawfully transferable but on dodgy moral ground.

[StescoG66]

Ramping up to head in to Taiwan?

[7mike]

tescorank said:

I wonder how long before the Chinese attempt to take over the World.

Well, they've already decided there's no freedom to protest in Manchester; https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63280519

[Cold]

"Guidance" is to be issued to British pilots to remind them not to disclose any sensitive information.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/oct/18/uk...

[rodericb]

That's amazing. What are the UK gov going to be able to do? Not much? You're not at war with China. I don't know much about military technology but where do the "secrets" start and end nowadays?

[RobGT81]

How very dare they. They are only allowed to go and work for the lovely armed forces of Saudi Arabia, because they give us loads of money and all that.

[Fundoreen]

We have been here before. We fell over ourselves to teach japan everything they needed to become a military power. They would police that part of the world for us and box in russian attempts to expand. Next think everyones running away in Singapore.
I guess like before we think we can deal with it as we are naturally superior.
Just making problems for the USA who actually do all the military stuff we talk about a lot.

[CrgT16]

In the end of the day money talks. It’s all very well being delivered principled. If I served in the military I would not do it. I wouldn’t pass my knowledge to a foreign force to disadvantage my colleagues or military. It would feel wrong knowing that my knowledge would help to fight my own.

But I get that money talks. I wouldn’t do it though.

[JagLover]

RobGT81 said:

How very dare they. They are only allowed to go and work for the lovely armed forces of Saudi Arabia, because they give us loads of money and all that.

We, and our allies, are unlikely to be at war with Saudi Arabia. You cannot say the same for China.

[Zetec-S]

JagLover said:

RobGT81 said:

How very dare they. They are only allowed to go and work for the lovely armed forces of Saudi Arabia, because they give us loads of money and all that.

We, and our allies, are unlikely to be at war with Saudi Arabia. You cannot say the same for China.

[ATG]

rodericb said:

That's amazing. What are the UK gov going to be able to do? Not much? You're not at war with China. I don't know much about military technology but where do the "secrets" start and end nowadays?

No idea where the start/end is now, but a few years back the starting point was "everything is secret" and it wasn't at all clear who was genuinely empowered to tell anyone anything. Unsurprisingly people tried to use their common sense to get on with the job with varying degrees of success. But it's pretty obvious when someone is deliberately taking the piss, or sailing very close to the wind, or blatantly trying to flog secrets for cash, and that's when the ridiculously broadly applicable law got deployed. And sometimes juries told the crown to do one, so there was some modicum of sanity applied at the final hurdle. Not a great system.

[Ntv]

Would be easy to introduce a law and stopped this immediately. And it wouldn't surprise me if it was done pretty soon tbh.

None of us have ever experienced anything like the rise of China. New rules of engagement needed.

[Eric Mc]

I would suggest they are already breaking The Official Secrets Act and could be prosecuted right now.

Disgraceful.

[The Wookie]

Probably quite a good way to get some of our pilots to have a good poke around and get an in depth understanding of Chinese fighters, and to make their pilots more predictable in battle

One would hope no-one would be daft enough to teach them anything too useful

[gifdy]

Eric Mc said:

I would suggest they are already breaking The Official Secrets Act and could be prosecuted right now.

Disgraceful.

Completely agree. They must know themselves they are on highly dodgy ground - and they must know exactly why the Chinese have asked for their 'expertise'. When are we going to learn as a country that China is continually exploiting our moral weakness and undermining our ability to stand up to them. Does my head in.

[Countdown]

The Wookie said:

Probably quite a good way to get some of our pilots to have a good poke around and get an in depth understanding of Chinese fighters, and to make their pilots more predictable in battle

I doubt the Chinese would be that stupid.

[hidetheelephants]

Rather ironic given UK forces pilot training has been a stshow since it was outsourced to a combine involving the usual suspects of Lockheed Martin, Babcock etc; perish the thought that the RAF should employ them to train RAF pilots in a timely manner.

Fundoreen said:

We have been here before. We fell over ourselves to teach japan everything they needed to become a military power. They would police that part of the world for us and box in russian attempts to expand. Next think everyones running away in Singapore.
I guess like before we think we can deal with it as we are naturally superior.
Just making problems for the USA who actually do all the military stuff we talk about a lot.

It was a bit more than that; Vickers Armstrongs etc were delighted to sell them the finest warships money could buy and probably the technology transfer to build their own too.

[ChocolateFrog]

gifdy said:

Eric Mc said:

I would suggest they are already breaking The Official Secrets Act and could be prosecuted right now.

Disgraceful.

Completely agree. They must know themselves they are on highly dodgy ground - and they must know exactly why the Chinese have asked for their 'expertise'. When are we going to learn as a country that China is continually exploiting our moral weakness and undermining our ability to stand up to them. Does my head in.

Most of our doctrine is online anyway.

I don't think you'd necessarily have to divulge secrets in order to be useful.

>£200k is going to be very tempting.

I'd imagine anyone with DV clearance would peak some interest at home.

[KAgantua]

What would they want with our old pirates?