An India-born engineer in Hawaii, charged with using secret military information to help China build a stealth cruise missile, is allegedly involved in deals involving several foreign countries.
WASHINGTON: An India-born engineer in Hawaii, charged with using secret military information to help China build a stealth cruise missile, is allegedly involved in deals involving several foreign countries.
Sixty two-year-old Noshir G Gowadia, originally charged with selling information involving the B-2 stealth bomber to three unnamed countries, is accused of assisting China with designing and testing an exhaust system nozzle that protects a cruise missile from detection.
His trial is set to being in July next year but the charges are expected to be more detailed than just selling secret stealth technology to China that would have facilitated the communist state to replicate or counter a key weapon in the U.S. military arsenal.
The naturalised American citizen from India is involved in deals including passing stealth technology for use in the TH-98 Eurocopter and for foreign commercial aircraft, according to a report in The Washington Times.
The court papers indicated that Gowadia sent e-mails to Israel, Germany and Switzerland in 2002 and 2004 that contained data labelled "secret" and "top secret" that was related to US stealth technology intended for use in the TH-98 Eurocopter and for foreign commerical aircraft, it said.
It is said a computer file found in Gowadia's Maui, Hawaii, home was a file containing the radar cross-sections of U.S. B-1 and F-15 jets and the Air Force's air-launched cruise missile, information that would be useful to countering systems by anti-aircraft missiles or other air defence weapons.
Gowadia is formally charged with making $110,000 in six visits to China between 2002 and 2005 but investigators believe he was paid $2 million, with some of the money remaining in foreign
bank accounts, the paper said.
Under the charges, Gowadia faces the death penalty as also the possibility of life in prison and a fine of $250,000.
The busting of the Hawaii based spy ring involving Gowadia is attracting national attention as details and court indictments are beginning to surface.
At first it was said that Gowadia may have passed on details of a classified technology related to the Stealth Bomber B-2's engine exhaust system and its ability to evade radar detection.
Subsequently it is being reported that Gowadia may have provided technical assistance to Chinese weapons designers in developing a cruise missile with an engine exhaust system that is hard to detect by radar and that he may have helped China modify a cruise missile so that it can intercept US air-to-air missiles and in weapons designers improve testing and measurement facilities.
Gowadia worked 18 years for Northrop Corp where he was an engineer and designed the B-2 stealth bomber's propulsion system and in Novemeber last year was charged with three counts of sharing secret military information.
The indictment said that Gowadia, who lives on an estate on the island in Maui, conspired with two men – Tommy Wong and Henri Nyo, to sell the technology.
Wong was identified in court papers as an official of the Chinese Foreign Experts Bureau who met the other men during meetings in Chengdu, China.
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