Ex-USMC Pilot Faces Criminal Charges for Training Chinese Naval Aviators

A former Marine Corps jump-jet pilot who gave up his U.S. citizenship faces extradition to the United States, where he will answer charges that he trained Chinese military pilots how to take off and land from an aircraft carrier. He leaves behind a wife and six children in Australia, his adopted homeland. 

According to his biography, Maj. Daniel Edmund Duggan (USMC, ret'd) is a former AV-8B Harrier II pilot who served for 13 years in the Marine Corps. At the time of his service in the 1990s and early 2000s, the Harrier was the USMC's primary fighter and close air support aircraft, and squadrons of AV-8Bs still regularly deploy today with Marine Amphibious Ready Groups aboard the U.S. Navy's big-deck amphibs. 

According to an official biography from his former company, Duggan also served as an air combat instructor for the USMC. In retirement, he moved to Australia and founded a company called Top Gun Tasmania, which specialized in providing for-hire flights for the general public in military trainer aircraft. Duggan sold this company and moved to China in 2014, where he founded an aviation company called AVIBIZ Limited in Qingdao. Two years later, he renounced his U.S. citizenship at the U.S. embassy in Beijing.

Duggan returned to Australia and was arrested in October 2022, following a request from the U.S. government, and he was held without bail pending extradition hearings. 

A federal indictment charges Duncan with conspiring to provide defense services to China without prior U.S. government authorization, despite a U.S. defense articles embargo on the Chinese government. The objective of the alleged conspiracy was to enable a South African consultancy to provide the PLA Navy with aircraft carrier takeoff and landing training. 

In furtherance of this goal, the co-conspirators allegedly bought a T-2 Buckeye trainer from an American dealer, without informing the dealer of the intended Chinese end-user. Duggan had no part in this equipment transfer, but was hired to provide "evaluation of [Chinese] military pilot trainees, testing of naval aviation related equipment, and instruction on the tactics, techniques and procedures" for carrier takeoff and landing, according to federal prosecutors. The indictment alleges that he made multiple trips to China and was paid tens of thousands of dollars - wired through the U.S. financial services system - for military flight training and evaluation services over the course of 2011-12. 

Duggan's co-conspirators included another former American fighter pilot who had served in the U.S. Navy, according to the indictment.

Duggan strenuously denies any wrongdoing and claims that he was only training civilian pilots in China. In court, he attempted to prevent the Australian government from sending him back to the U.S., asserting that the charges are politically motivated and that he could not be guaranteed a fair trial in U.S. courts. He lost the case, and a final personal appeal to Australia's attorney general was not successful. Despite a high-profile advocacy campaign organized by his family, he will be flown back to the U.S. to stand trial on charges of money laundering and arms trafficking. If convicted, he faces up to 60 years in prison, and his family's two homes in Australia may be subject to forfeiture.