Here are some of the problems that were found: (from KXLY.com)
The investigators dug through the supply chain for three types of suspected counterfeit parts on U.S. military aircraft:
—The SH-60B is a Navy helicopter that hunts for enemy submarines and assists with surface warfare. The investigation found that a part that compromised the copter’s night-vision system contained counterfeit parts that investigators traced back to China.
—The probe found counterfeit parts in the systems that tell pilots of the C-130 and C-27 cargo planes about the aircraft’s performances. The part could have caused those systems to go blank. Again the part in question was traced back to China.
—The P8-A is a Navy version of the Boeing 737 used for anti-submarine warfare and other duties. The Navy is testing the aircraft now and intends to buy more than 100 of them. But the test planes contained a reworked part that never should have been on the airplane. The part was used but made to look new. The part, investigators found, originally came from China.
But the committee didn’t reserve all its blame for China; some of it was directed right at the Pentagon itself.
The report said in each of the three cases that the committee investigated in depth, the Department of Defense was unaware that counterfeit electronic parts had been installed on certain defense systems until the committee’s investigation.
Even though the report just came out, the committee has already taken action to deal with the problem. Levin and McCain offered an amendment to the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act to address weaknesses in the defense supply chain and to promote the adoption of aggressive counterfeit avoidance practices by DOD and the defense industry.
The amendment was adopted in the final bill signed by President Barack Obama on December 31, 2011.
Part of that law will mean that when a contractor finds bad parts on a weapons system, the contractor or the parts supplier will pay to fix the problem. In the past, those costs were often borne by the DOD.
Good post ... but here’s the problem.
Parts in aircraft are routinely removed and sent to various “Depots” throughout the world for maintenance, re-calibration, testing and upgrades.
Now, you take a radio that supplier ‘x’ fixed, and he finds a bad (chip, resistor, capacitor, choke). Who put the bad part in the Field Servicable Unit (FSU) or Laboratory Repairable Unit (LRU)? Countess hands have touched it, and you can bet the farm that everyone with a finger in this, is going to point it at someone else.
The problem is that the Counterfeit parts look almost exactly like the real thing. And I’m unaware of any supplier who knowingly would jeopardize his livelihood by knowingly purchasing counterfeit parts to put into a goverment device. I mean, if a replacement component costs $1,000 and you get 15% mark-up; would you knowingly replace that component with a cheap knock-off? Would you risk your company and/or job on something like this?
The problem is that these parts get mixed into large populations of legitimate parts - because there is a huge trade in obsoletel chips on the international market. It’s not just the USA that has aging aircraft out there, but also our allies and enemies. If you think it’s rough on us, think about a country like Russia.