Engineer sold stealth secrets to China

A former B-2 stealth bomber engineer has been sentenced to 32 years in prison for selling military secrets to China. Noshir Gowadia, 66, was convicted in August on 14 counts, including communicating national defence information to aid a foreign nation and violating the Arms Export Control Act.

"He broke his oath of loyalty to this country," Chief US District Judge Susan Oki Mollway said at the sentencing.

Prosecutors said Gowadia, who was born in India, helped China to design a stealth cruise missile to get money to pay the $15,000-a-month mortgage on his luxurious home overlooking the ocean on Maui. They say he pocketed at least $110,000.

A federal jury in Honolulu found that Gowadia helped China to design a cruise missile exhaust nozzle that would give off less heat, allowing the missile to evade infrared radar detection and US heat-seeking missiles. The jury also found him guilty of attempting to sell classified stealth technology to the Swiss and businesses in Israel and Germany. The defence argued that Gowadia provided unclassified information only to China.

Last March, a Chinese-born engineer Dongfan "Greg" Chung was sentenced to 15 years for six counts of economic espionage.