By seeking civil forfeiture of “mobile trainers—classroom-style systems designed to instruct aircrews” that were being shipped from South Africa to China when seized by the U.S. at an unknown time in an unknown location, the Department of Justice has put that seizure in the news (Washington Tariff & Trade Letter, January 15, 2026).
According to the complaint, the mobile trainers—classroom-style systems designed to instruct aircrews—were shipped by the Test Flying Academy of South Africa (TFASA). Prosecutors say the systems were built to train PLA personnel on airborne warning and control and anti-submarine warfare aircraft, using software and defense technical data subject to U.S. export controls.
Assistant Attorney General John A. Eisenberg said TFASA “masquerades as a civilian flight-training academy” while serving as a conduit for transferring NATO aviation expertise and restricted technology to China. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said the seizure reflects the government’s use of “every lawful tool” to keep sensitive military technology from adversaries.
Court filings allege the trainers—known internally as “Project Elgar”—were modeled on the P‑8 Poseidon, the U.S. Navy’s primary anti-submarine warfare platform manufactured by Boeing. The systems allegedly ran software built atop a U.S. flight-simulation program and enhanced with Western anti-submarine warfare data. Former NATO aviators were involved in development, prosecutors say, to replicate Western tactics and procedures.
“The Test Flying Academy of South Africa illegally exported U.S. military flight simulator technology and recruited former NATO pilots for the purpose of training China’s military, jeopardizing U.S. national security and placing the lives of American service members at risk,” says the assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, Roman Rozhavsky.
Entity List
In June 2023, the U.S. added TFASA and affiliates to its Entity List, the list of bad-guy individuals, companies, and government organizations that are judged to be a risk to U.S. national security or interests. Being on the list triggers restrictions on the kinds of transactions that may be conducted with the listed entity.
That the training system was anything more than a (presumably innocuous) civilian flight-training system is a contention that the South African company disputes.
In asseverations posted at its website, TFASA says that it “rejects any suggestion that NATO expertise was transferred, or that any U.S. military technology, defence technical data, or other restricted information was exported in breach of applicable laws. The containers in question were basic mobile classroom units and did not comprise or represent any form of tactical simulators, advanced systems, or any classified, sensitive, or mission-specific, tailored military training capabilities; they were limited to non-sensitive, procedural and instructional use, using publicly available and commercially licensed inputs, and were designed as mission crew training systems aimed at supporting crew resource management functions within maritime patrol aviation environments.”
This is a pretty big disagreement about what was in those containers! Somebody’s lying!
When contexts disrupt
What’s happening, says TFASA, is that the pursuit of these “unfounded and disproportionate” allegations (worse even than unfounded and proportionate allegations) reflects a “broader geopolitical context directed at disrupting lawful business activity conducted transparently and in good faith.” Anyone who talks about what independent agents like broad geopolitical contexts are up to is suspect for this reason alone.
Anyway, look at what TFASA admits to trying to do: help the People’s Republic of China train mission crews who would be involved in “maritime patrol aviation environments.”
Do we know of any “maritime patrol aviation environments” in which the PRC and the PLA and the China Coast Guard are heavily involved, picking quarrels and provoking trouble? Maritime: “of, relating to, or bordering on the sea.” Taiwan Strait? South China Sea? East China Sea? Philippine Sea? Sea of Japan? TFASA doesn’t deny that the containers had been on the way to China.
