China fighter plane documents highlight cyber spying: Julie Bishop
REVELATIONS that Chinese spies stole sensitive information about Australia’s next-generation warplane from the United States highlight the threat of cyber-espionage, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop says.
Confidential documents, disclosed by former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden to German magazine Der Spiegel, show that Chinese agents stole large volumes of sensitive military information relation to the American-built F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
The stolen technology included details about the aircraft’s radar design, engine schematics, methods for cooling exhaust gas and aft desk heating contour maps, one document suggests.
Ms Bishop played down the importance of the seized intelligence, saying the revelations were “quite old now” and “reflect a situation some time ago”.
“I have every confidence the United States is doing everything it can to protect its intellectual property,” she told Sky News.
“It does highlight the challenges of cyber attacks, of course, but I’m confident that the United States has taken measures to ensure its intellectual property is protected.”
It is now more than two-and-a-half years since Mr Snowden, 31, fled the US. He arrived first in Hong Kong and then Russia, where he sought asylum in August 2013.
Labor assistant treasury spokesman Andrew Leigh said: “The Joint Strike Fighter is an important program for Australia — we’re in it with the British, the Canadians and the Americans — and it’s a very ambitious project.
“It’s had challenges with costs. It’s a new generation fighter and so that presents challenges of its own.
“This story aside, air superiority is dependent not only on your intellectual property but also in your ability to deliver that platform.”
The Abbott government has committed to 72 of the fifth-generation stealth fighters and with an option to increase that to 100.
The overall cost of the project for an eventual total of 100 aircraft is put at about $16 billion.
The RAAF’s first JSF squadron is due to be operational by 2020 and Australian companies have already won contracts worth about $400 million to make high-grade carbon-fibre composite parts, including the distinctive upright tailfins, for many of the aircraft.
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