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U.S. Waived Laws To Keep F-35 On Track With China-made Parts
An anonymous reader sends this report from Reuters:
"The Pentagon repeatedly waived laws banning Chinese-built components on U.S. weapons in order to keep the $392 billion Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter program on track in 2012 and 2013, even as U.S. officials were voicing concern about China's espionage and military buildup. According to Pentagon documents reviewed by Reuters, chief U.S. arms buyer Frank Kendall allowed two F-35 suppliers, Northrop Grumman Corp and Honeywell International Inc, to use Chinese magnets for the new warplane's radar system, landing gears and other hardware. Without the waivers, both companies could have faced sanctions for violating federal law and the F-35 program could have faced further delays."
There's a lot of electronic parts in those planes. Seriously, where do you get the electronic components to run a modern warplane if not from China this last decade?
Assuming that there is any sort of provision to waive the restriction under chosen circumstances (and if there aren't, then the law could use a bit of a fixing), we're talking about magnets here. This isn't as though they're using a whole PCB from China with their firmware or something. Magnets. You can't do much spying with a piece of metal. If the random testing they do on all components anyway passes, I don't see any reason to find this problematic. China already has a near monopoly on rare earth materials so it's not particularly surprising that this is happening.
The good thing to do would be to try to plan ahead and develop internal facilities so that eventually it's roughly breaking even to use US magnets instead. The danger isn't in the magnets but in the dependency on another country.
During the height of the cold war, around the time of the Cuban missile crisis, the US built the SR-71, which was designed to spy on the Soviet Union, out of titanium supplied *by* the Soviet Union, which at the time had a near-monopoly on titanium.
"Components. American components, Russian Components, ALL MADE IN TAIWAN!"
Wasn't it a clever idea to let Magnaquench be sold to China? For those unfamiliar with it Magnaquench was one of, if not the, pioneer in rare earth magnets, and their use in various applications, including military. Here are links to articles about it in two websites that are on opposite sides of the political spectrum. Anything that the Heritage Foundation and DailyKos agree on is definitely worth considering.
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2008/05/magnequench-cfius-and-chinas-thirst-for-us-defense-technology
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/05/03/508203/-Magnaquench-160-Weapon-technology-with-a-bow-on-it
The F-35 is already in production and has been for several years - its in a phase called Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP) and the aircraft produced under is are indeed final production examples (barring any rework needed) rather than test aircraft.
100 production standard aircraft have been produced to date.
If you think the magnet thing is bad, how do you feel about G.E. to Share Jet Technology With China in New Joint Venture? No dual use there, right? An easy field to develop expertise in, right? Which explains why the three major Western jet engine manufacturers (GE, Pratt-Whitney and Rolls-Royce), have been in control of the field since WWII. This is not something you figure out overnight. It's also no secret that jet engines are the biggest obstacle to developing "all Chinese" fighters.
I like the part where the article's headline specifically calls out the Chinese sourced magnets even though in three of the four violations cited the magnets came from Japan, not China.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
When the shit hits the fan and a US pilot is in a dogfight with a Chinese pilot, and the Chinese pilot throws the switch which tuns off the magnets in the US plane...
The F-35 is a huge threat to US security. It is bankrupting the nation, incapable of doing the job, and every squadron that adopts it becomes immediately non-operational due to all of its problems. If a foreign government did this to the US the cruise missiles would have been launched long ago. Kill the program!.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
The heritage piece was an opportunist hatchet job to discredit all democratic presidential candidates
That must explain their crediting Hillary Clinton with having raised a legitimate concern, and their incredibly partisan conclusion that "it is not clear from the record that either Republicans or the Democrats, Bushes or Clintons, have the intestinal fortitude to take the steps necessary to monitor problematic foreign investment in America's high-technology manufacturing sectors".
Kos is so vague that I would argue it is wrong, and clearly given the date a pro-Obama job.
Yes, they're guilty of making incredibly vague statements like "in 1995 The Clinton Administration approved the sale of an Indiana company that made guidence systems for smart bombs to a Chinese led consortium". How could you even attempt to verify that?
I see editorial opportunism in both
Yes, citing facts to bolster an opinion is clearly opportunism.
So what is the point? Are they both right?
That wouldn't be surprising\, given that they both mention the same facts and concerns.
On December 19, 2013, Molycorp started up their rare earths separation plant. It's in Mountain Pass, California. So now there's a US source.
It's not that the US lacks rare earth metal resources. It's that, until recently, China was a cheaper supplier. Then the goverment of China tried to keep the price up and insisted that Chinese companies sell motors and other completed products, not raw materials. Some rare earth metal prices shot up by a factor of 20. So the Mountain Pass mine, closed in 2002, was cranked up again, this time with new equjpiment better pollution controls.
Pollution controls for a rare earth mine are a big deal. "Rare earths" are present in low concentrations, which means that a mine generates a small amount of product and huge amounts of toxic sludge. The big rare earths mine in China has the world's largest sludge pond, and it leaks. This created an environmental disaster area for tens of kilometers around. Villages have had to be evacuated because of sludge pond leaks. The Mountain Pass, California mine is less than a mile from I-15 between Barstow and Las Vegas. The US EPA, California regulatory authorities, and the Sierra Club all had to be satisfied that this project wouldn't create a big mess. That was done.
Now Molycorp complains that smuggling of rare earths out of China is pushing the price down, but they're digging them up, processing, and shipping them. Problem solved.