Snowden Reveals that China Stole Plans For New F-35
The documents leaked by Edward Snowden have uncovered a new large-scale industrial espionage campaign conducted by the Chinese Government. State-sponsored hackers have operated to steal sensitive information on advanced fighter aircraft, the US-built F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). The Australian Government has ordered 72 F-35 jets that will be operational in 2020.
According to Snowden, the US Intelligence was aware that Chinese cyber spies have stolen "many terabytes of data" about the design of Australia's Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II JSF. The details of the operation are described in a set of top-secret documents published by the Der Spiegel magazine.
Chinese hackers have allegedly stolen as much as 50 terabytes of data, including the details of the fighter's radar systems, engine schematics, "aft deck heating contour maps," designs to cool exhaust gases and the method the jet uses to track targets.
The purpose of the Chinese Government is to acquire intellectual property on advanced technologies, benefiting Chinese companies on the market and narrowed the gap in the research of advanced technological solution. Military experts speculated that the stolen blue prints could help the country to develop a new generation of advanced aircraft fighter, so called "fifth-generation" fighters.
Military experts confirmed a striking resemblance with the Chinese advanced fighter jets, the Chengdu J-20 and the Shenyang J-31 Falcon Hawk, this second vehicle quite similar to F-35 JSF.
Not only F-35 documents were stolen, sensitive military data stolen by the foreign Intelligence included information relating to the Northrop-Grumman B-2 stealth bomber, the F-22 Raptor stealth fighter, nuclear submarine and naval air-defence missile designs. The hackers also accessed tens of thousands of military personnel records. Defence missile designs. The total data theft was estimated to be equivalent to "five Libraries of Congress (50 terabytes).
