Chinese selling counterfeit parts to the US military

I wasn't aware of the US miltary buying any parts from China.

More like American Military (sub) contractors using dodgy American middlemen because of incredibly antiquated designs, who then buy dubious obsolete, used or otherwise off-spec stuff marked-to-order from Chinese basement operations who give them exactly what they ask for.

"asdf" schreef in bericht news:j9dsoj$47m$ snipped-for-privacy@speranza.aioe.org...

Seems the Chineese are taking over the US not by military force but by economic. US depends on Chinese loans for a great part and now even become depending on electronics even for the military. Where are all those mil. specs. that made life difficult for western manufacturers? No need to check when the parts come from China? Not excluding China for delivering parts for months or even years? No punishment or sanctions at all?

petrus bitbyter

true, and the parts are supose to have traceability and pass qualification and QA at several levels.....

And price marked up to cover the kick-backs to the Obama administration. ...Jim Thompson

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I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

That might depend on the service and how the contracts are written. If the vendor is responsible for the inspection, it might not happen.

Here's a recent article on how the Missile Defense Agency is being used as a model to eliminate counterfeit parts.

----------------------------------------------------------------------- MDA a Model for Avoiding Counterfeit Parts

Lawmakers are turning to the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) as a possible model for how the U.S. Defense Department can stop counterfeit electronic parts from entering the defense supply chain.

Soon after he took over MDA in 2008, O'Reilly looked into the origin of counterfeit parts after they were found in a missile defense telemetry system.

"We found that all counterfeit parts were coming from independent distributors," O'Reilly said.

According to O'Reilly, MDA was unable to certify 61 percent of the independent distributors researched. O'Reilly said these distributors were deemed moderate to high risk because they could not produce a sufficient paper trail for the origins of their parts.

The Senate Armed Services Committee recently completed its own investigation, which showed most of the counterfeit electronics that make their way into U.S. military systems originate in China.

After making this discovery, the MDA director signed a ban in 2009 that prohibited all contractors from going to independent distributors without first coming to MDA for permission. O'Reilly said the best way to eliminate counterfeit parts is to eliminate their source, and MDA does this by limiting the use of independent parts distributors.

Contractors working with MDA are limited to buying parts from the original manufacturer or authorized distributors. If this isn't an option, the contractor has to prove to MDA why it needs to go to an independent distributor and must also agree to rigorously test those parts.

[...]

O'Reilly told them it does not matter if a contract is cost-plus or fixed-price if it includes a clause that makes it clear the contractor has to pick up replacement costs if he buys parts from an unauthorized distributor.

Levin said the MDA's model should be followed by the military services and the Defense Department.

Mike

That's the thing- there are people who d*mn well should know better doing seriously irresponsible, likely illegal and certainly non-conforming things at several stages. For money.

They just sent a FL woman to jail for a few years for doing this sort of thing- they were selling remarked crap to other middemen who were not asking enough questions and thence through more stages.

You can buy pretty much whatever you need in China in the way of electronics, just have to be rather careful who you deal with. Out of

1,000 small-scale vendors there are bound to be some that specialize or dabble in this sort of thing.

Cheney would never have got a kick-back from Haliburton...

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

That happens in the UK too, to the unwary. Sometimes it's a legit deal, sometimes it's a fake.. The trick is to establish a good relationship with a Chinese supplier.... Ad hoc = disaster. !!

"petrus bitbyter" wrote in news:4eba97b4$0$1119$ snipped-for-privacy@dreader27.news.xs4all.nl:

The MIL-SPECs are still there. But many MIL-SPEC transistors and ICs are no longer being manufactured in the USA so the companies who need some old parts shop on EBay or ask around, Somebody will answer "I got 50 of what you want in the basement." and negociate a sale.

But what gets delivered is scrap pulled off of pcboards, with old part number sanded off and a new part number pretending to be somebody else's higher quality product.

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Bob Q.
PA is y I've altered my address.

You would not be able to spot a transistor removed from a PCB?

Those solutions are obvious. Why is the DOD allowing *any* contractor to buy floor sweepings?

John S wrote in news:j9f2d2$our$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

These counterfeiters go to a lot of effort to make the devices look new.

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Bob Q.
PA is y I've altered my address.