Military Technical Data on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to China

On July 1, 2009, Dr. John Reece Roth was sentenced in the Eastern District of Tennessee to 48 months in prison, two years supervised release and a $1,700 assessment for illegally exporting sensitive military technical data related to a U.S. Air Force contract. Roth, a former Professor Emeritus at the University of Tennessee, was convicted on September 2, 2008 of 15 counts of violating the Arms Export Control Act, one count of conspiracy, and one count of wire fraud. Roth had illegally exported military technical data relating to plasma technology designed to be deployed on the wings of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or “drones” operating as a weapons or surveillance systems. The illegal exports involved technical data related to an Air Force research contract that Roth provided to foreign nationals from China and Iran. In addition, Roth carried multiple documents containing controlled military data with him on a trip to China and caused other controlled military data to be e-mailed to an individual in China. On August 20, 2008, Atmospheric Glow Technologies, Inc (AGT), a privately-held plasma technology company in Tennessee, also pleaded guilty to charges of illegally exporting U.S. military data about drones to a citizen of China in violation of the Arms Export Control Act. AGT was sentenced on February 12, 2010 to a $4,000 assessment and a $25,000 fine. Roth and AGT were first charged on May 20, 2008. In a related case, on April 15, 2008, Daniel Max Sherman, a physicist who formerly worked at AGT, pleaded guilty to an information charging him with conspiracy to violate the Arms Export Control Act in connection with this investigation. Sherman was later sentenced to 14 months in prison on August 10, 2009 after cooperating in the investigation. The investigation was conducted by the FBI, ICE, U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations, DCIS and BIS.