If you’re going to take grants from the US Air Force, be careful who you work with. That’s the lesson for J. Reece Roth, a retired engineer accused of supplying military secrets to China via his graduate student. According to the Associated Press, the 70-year old, formerly of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, has been indicted on charges that he violated the Arms Control Export Act and defrauded the Air Force.

I wrote about the case in 2006, when Reece Roth first came under suspicion of passing secrets. The good professor was working on ways in which ionized gas, known as plasma, could be used to reduce drag on a wing. The idea could potentially be used to shorten the length of takeoffs and landings for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. He had worked with a Chinese graduate student named Xin Dai, which he claimed the Air Force knew about.

But the United States seems to think otherwise. In its complaint, the government says they were never notified of Xin’s work on the project. They also allege that Roth took sensitive documents with him on a 2006 trip to China.

Roth isn’t talking now because of the indictment, but back when I spoke to him he denied both charges: “This whole thing has been an Orwellian experience,” he said.

If convicted, it could get worse for the former engineer. He would face more than 150 years in prison and millions in fines.

Image: an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle/USAF