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US Military Trying To Weed Out Counterfeit Parts
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from an AP report:
"'Sprinkling' sounds like a fairly harmless practice, but in the hands of sophisticated counterfeiters it could deceive a major weapons manufacturer and possibly endanger the lives of U.S. troops. It's a process of mixing authentic electronic parts with fake ones in hopes that the counterfeits will not be detected when companies test the components for multimillion-dollar missile systems, helicopters and aircraft. It was just one of the brazen steps described Tuesday at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing examining the national security and economic implications of suspect counterfeit electronics — mostly from China — inundating the Pentagon's supply chain. ... The committee's ongoing investigation found about 1,800 cases of suspect counterfeit electronics being sold to the Pentagon. The total number of parts in these cases topped 1 million. By the semiconductor industry's estimates, counterfeiting costs $7.5 billion a year in lost revenue and about 11,000 U.S. jobs."
Most likely, it is a generally unimportant COTS part. Could be resistors, fluorescing CRT panels... w/e. TFA mentions a 12$ million weapon system being ruined by a bad 2$ part.
This is not a new problem. About 10 years ago a Luftwaffe mechanic changing bolts on the propeller assembly (IIRC) of a bunch of heavy transport planes became suspicious when the nuts he was handed were a different color than usual. He reported it and the things turned out to be made of mild steel; his meticulous nature prevented a really ugly accident. Some people weren't that lucky. I read somewhere they even found fake parts on Air-Force One.