Counterfeit Parts Found on P-8 Posiedons

[Contrary1]

:wow: From China. Who could have foreseen this?

"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 counterfeit 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..."


More: http://defensetech.org/2011/11/08/counterfeit-parts-found-on-new-p-8-posiedons/

Check out the pictures and slide show accompanying this story

[Scuba]

1. "Fake"? Or is the MIC just using cheapest available labor?

[JHB]

12. No reason they can't be both. In fact, one encourages the other.

[Aerows]

2. I'd look squarely at the defense contractors

This is what happens when you get private companies whose only purpose it to profit - they will profit at the expense of whoever, whatever, and however.

[Blue_Tires]

8. +1

[Scuba]

14. We did that but our government SEALED THE RECORDS FOR 20 YEARS...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x5037085

[Octafish]

3. Ever hear of MAGNEQUENCH?

Outsourcing US Missile Technology to China: US Workers Charge Treason

[hootinholler]

7. How do you DO that?

I'm continually in awe, Der Fishie.

[Hubert Flottz]

13. The free traitors have destroyed the American Industrial Base

The same industrial base that saved the world from the Nazis and the true WWII era "Axis of Evil". And while Cheney and Bush were bragging about protecting America's "National Security" things like this were taking place on their watch.

Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology
by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

Snip...

In 1995, Magnequench was purchased from GM by Sextant Group, an investment company headed by Archibald Cox, Jr-the son of the Watergate prosecutor. After the takeover, Cox was named CEO. What few knew at the time was that Sextant was largely a front for two Chinese companies, San Huan New Material and the China National Non-Ferrous Metals Import and Export Corporation. Both of these companies have close ties to the Chinese government. Indeed, the ties were so intimate that the heads of both companies were in-laws of the late Chinese premier Deng Xiaopeng.

At the time of the takeover, Cox pledged to the workers that Magnequench was in it for the long haul, intending to invest money in the plants and committed to keeping the production line going for at least a decade.

Three years later Cox shut down the Anderson plant and shipped its assembly line to China. Now Cox is presiding over the closure of Magnequench’s last factory in the US, the Valparaiso, Indiana plant that manufactures the magnets for the JDAM bomb. Most of the workers have already been fired.

"Archie Cox and his company are committing a criminal act," says Mike O’Brien, an organizer with the UAW in Indiana. "He’s a traitor to his country." Read More...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2003/10/25/outsourcing-us-guided-missile-technology/

[Hubert Flottz]

16. K&R

This is some crazy shit! Obama needs to set the DOJ on these traitors. Wouldn't you hate to be an American service man or woman and to find your self in a combat situation with weapons that were not dependable, because some greedy CEO somewhere decided to cut corners, to make himself an extra buck? Here is another case where REGULATION was needed!

[Fumesucker]

4. Best comment on the link..

"I'm proud to know that my 1980's computers are out there defending the free world."

:rofl:

[lpbk2713]

5. But it was a sweet deal for the DoD buyers.

They had over 67 shares in the syndicate.





:eyes:

[hootinholler]

6. As a submariner, I was like Posiden? That missile system was replaced with Trident

Once upon a time, didn't we have a Made in the USA requirement for military hardware?

[DainBramaged]

9. And if we still made parts in fuckng AMERICA tis would not have happened

but these stupid fuckers won't learn, it's too late.

[FarCenter]

10. The problem is that military equipment contains many obsolete electronic parts

Military equipment has a relatively long life, both with respect to new production and with respect to the manufacture of replacement boards, subassemblies, etc. Furthermore, even when newly designed, the designers may have used "tried and true" components that had been in production for a while, or semiconductors with wide line widths in order to meet MIL spec requirements.

In many cases, the original components are no longer made, either because the US semiconductor manufacturer is no longer in business or because the manufacture of those obsolete components is no longer profitable -- in many cases they are no longer used in any commercial application.

Parts which were commercial parts, or even commercial parts which were equivalent to the MIL spec parts, are in commercial electronic and computer system. As these are junked by commercial users, they generally wind up somewhere in the Far East, where they are disassembled and recycled for the precious metals and other materials that they contain, such as copper, lead, tin, etc. Of course, older electronics can also be disassembled and used components can be recovered.

The old components are then remarked as MIL spec parts and sold back into the distribution chains accessed by the companies in the US producing military replacement parts.

From what I heard of the Senate hearings, I don't think that there are many counterfiet components made in China. Its mostly this recycling of obsolete electronics. However, there may be some making of new counterfeit parts on obsolete semiconductor manufacturing lines that have been sold to China. Or on semiconductor manufacturing lines built in China that have the line widths of two decade old semi lines in the US.

[Hubert Flottz]

11. If you were China and you wanted your subs to do as they pleased

wouldn't you try to disable the aircraft that search for submarines?

I don't doubt for a minute that the government of China, at least knew about this.

[Hotler]

15. Maybe when Chairman Levin and his fellow politicians ask why...

they should go stand in front of a mirror. After all they control the purse strings and write the laws. It is all about the money. Nothing is done in Washington unless it puts tons of money in few pockets including their own. Money trumps everything. Is anyone really surprised?????