Posted on 11/10/2011 6:59:08 AM PST by pabianice
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich) just dropped a couple of very alarming tales during a hearing about counterfeit parts making their way into brand new U.S. military weapons.
Earlier this year, Boeing and the Navy found that the ice detection system on a brand new P-8 Poseidon was defective. The ice detection system is a critical piece of hardware designed to prevent tragedies by alerting pilots to the presence of ice on an aircraft’s control surfaces. Where did this defective part come from? China. A whole batch of a key piece of the ice detection hardware that was sent to the P-8 production line turned out to be used and worn out parts that were badly refurbished and sold to P-8 subcontractor BAE Systems as a new part, according to Levin. Boeing and BAE first became aware of the problem in 2009, he added.
The fake P-8 parts are just one of many examples of how counterfeit parts — often made from 1980s and 1990s-vintage junk computer parts that are sanded down and remarked in China and then sold back to the U.S. as brand new computer chips for advanced weapons systems. One witness at the hearing just described growing counterfiet semiconductors seeping into critical weapons systems as “ticking time bombs.”
Levin also noted that China feels no need to cooperate in his investigation into the problem, saying that the Chinese ambassador to Washington declined to send a representative to the hearing, despite the fact that there’s plenty of evidence that the vast majority of counterfeit weapons parts are coming from China.
This is just the tip of the iceberg of a huge problem that I wrote extensively about at Inside the Air Force in early 2008.
(Excerpt) Read more at defensetech.org ...
Criminal receiving inspection failure within the military-industrial supply complex. I wonder if this problem is exacerbated by the SADBUS requirements placed on gubermint contractors?
WHy does this not surprise me?
SADBUS (Small and Disadvantaged Business -- alias minority contractor set-aside) requirements could very well be the problem. The fact that we are not hearing about what contractor supplied the fake parts is troubling but not unexpected.
China won’t need to fight us in order to beat us, they just need to wait until we fall apart. Let’s stop buying $800 toilet seats and $1,000 hammers and buy quality components from American suppliers where the quality can be controlled.
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Senator Lenin ping
I work on a MAJOR AF Base, when we ordered a number of CISCO IT Switches, base contracting changed the order to HP and when they arrived EVERY LAST ONE of them where made in CHINA! They are going to go into a MAJOR C2 area!
“Levin says he is crafting an amendment to the FY-12 defense authorization bill that would require inspections of all electronic parts coming from China...”
Wow. You mean that all electronics parts are currently NOT inspected when they are received, regardless of source? What buyer does not inspect his purchases to make sure they are genuine, not counterfeit?
BUMP to the EFFIN TOP.
Why should the feel like they need to cooperate? Who's going to hold them accountable? Our Secretary of State? They have enough dirt on Hillary from the Clinton administration days to send her to prison.
I keep waiting for some story, somewhere, that dissuades me from the impression that each and every piece of society, or finance, or law enforcement, or politics, or societal structure of virtually any kind, is undergirded by, infected with, suffused with, flat out fraud.
I don’t think the AF wants to the P-8 for ASW. That’s not an AF mission. They’re looking at a variant of the P-8 to replace JSTARS.
You misunderstand. I mean the P-8 is what the Air Force would have come up with to do ASW -- a very expensive, marginal platform. BTW, B-52s have done mine-laying in the past but without much success.
In brief, Procurement quality traceability was maintained by:
Supplier/Distributor on site source inspection or
Certification of Conformance from suppliers or
Approval of supply source fron another accredited agency (usually a corporate sister division) or
Lot sampling at receiving inspection and
Participation in GIDEP Government Industry Data Exchange Program)
I wonder, though, as to the true nature of this enemy. In no way do I disagree with you, but stepping back some...
The enemy has cloaked itself in many forms. For example, the mafia and current-day drug cartels have established elaborate looting schemes...and one wouldn’t exactly call them Marxists. The mafia doesn’t establish teaching curricula to turn childrens’ brains into mush over two generations. Likewise, Wall St weasels like Corzine and Blankfein can hardly be called Marxists. Oh sure, maybe they contribute to Dems, but really, that’s not all that probative as far as I’m concerned.
What all these elements have in common is the singleminded dedication to fraud. And I don’t have any grand all-encompassing theory to present to you (right now) and yes, the ChiComs are obviously Marxists, etc; but it’s pure flaming greed they are using as the edge of the knife on us.
#2 on your list sounds like self-certification by the supplier. Is that right?
That is essentially right with the qualification that the supplier/distributor has been approved by a contractor complaince inspection, another major contractor or the government.
This level of control was typically used for components like resistors, capacitors, semiconductors and non-custom ICs.
A certification of compliance would have to list conformance to the governing specification, show country of origin, show compliance with standard marking practives and show traceability, usually by serial number or more commonly, lot date code.
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