GAO Sting Finds More Fake Military Parts From China 180
Nidi62 writes "The Government Accountability Office, through a fictitious company, recently requisitioned parts from China in order to determine if the Chinese government was living up to its promises of battling counterfeit parts. The report from the GAO found that '334 of 396 vendors who offered to sell parts to the fictitious company were from China' and that 'all 16 parts eventually purchased by the fake company came from 13 China-based vendors and all were determined by an independent testing laboratory to be counterfeit.' The parts requested were supposedly for use in F-15s, MV-22 Ospreys, and nuclear submarines, and were requested as new parts. The report (PDF) also says that in the past three years, over one million counterfeit parts came from Chinese companies. This stands in sharp contrast to the Chinese government's promise to clamp down on the production of counterfeit parts in China."
... and nobody is surprised. (Score:5, Informative)
China looks out for China, nobody else.
Re:Couldn't this just be assumed? (Score:4, Informative)
They did not order anything from China. They ordered it from American companies which were supposed to have them manufactured locally, but instead they've got Chinese-made parts.
Re:counterfit? (Score:4, Informative)
Counterfeit, in this context, usually means made with inferior materials that wear out faster.
Re:Not sourced in the US? (Score:5, Informative)
I work in aerospace. Ironically, in quality.
The problem is likely to be counterfiet material (stock material sold as 2025, or 7075, but is really some gods awful alloy of who knows what, but you would never know the difference because it weighs the same, mills the same, and looks the same...... until you do a hardness test, a conductivity test, and a vapor assa test.)
Other things likely counterfieted:
Bolts. Nuts. Nutplates. Washers. Rivets. Paint. Adhesives.
We literally order NAS and BACD nutplates and rivets by lots of 1 million. We go through those things like diabetic children dig through candy. It would be *really* easy for our suppliers to slip us a mickey, and sell us bogus nutplates. Those things have specifications they have to meet, concerning their material composition, degree of heat treat, size, and overal dimensions, including weight, and finish. Once cooked up though, are you *really* going to check each and every nutplate in a bin of 1 million to look for counterfeits?
That's the problem. Counterfeit rivets and nutplates throw a monkey wrench in a product's expected lifecycle. Shitty rivets crack out. They corrode. They induce the rest of the assembly to corrode. They respond incorrectly to changing pressure... on and on and on.
Similar with bad adhesives and finishes.
What, are you going to expect every plant in america to do wet chemistry testing on all their paints, primers, and sealants? In addition to vapor testing each and every rivet and nutplate?
Can't be done. Airplanes would cost billions of dollars each.
The US govt wants to crack down on it? Here's an idea: customs can do its fucking job, and search cargo containers from china for counterfiet goods.
That way the cheap chinese knockoffs don't get mixed into fungible supply bins, and we don't have this problem.
Re:counterfit? (Score:5, Informative)
They're parts being sold with fake product numbers and manufacturing dates to make it look like they came from an original parts manufacturer. Some of them probably don't meet specifications, and the danger is that you can't tell without testing them because they're misrepresenting themselves as being from a reputable source. That's definitely no good when these parts are being installed in aircraft and weapons.
As another example of potentially dangerous counterfeits, there's counterfeit climbing gear [grough.co.uk] floating around out there that apparently fails at forces far lower than it's claimed to be rated for.
Re:Not sourced in the US? (Score:3, Informative)
You are abit off on the A-10, as both the toolings and he detailed plans are in longterm storage - the DoD retains the ability to restart production at any time, it just needs funding. It's actually a rarity for military aircraft toolings and plans to be destroyed, most of the time they are stored for later use.
With the F-22 shutdown, Lockheed spent millions of dollars on video documenting every aspect of production, with the line workers detailing what they do and how they doit, so production can be picked up with a lower learning curve.