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Lockheed Martin Screwup Delays Delivery of Air Force GPS Satellites (bloomberg.com)
schwit1 writes: Incompetence by a Lockheed Martin subcontractor will delay the delivery of 32 new Air Force GPS satellites and will likely cost the government millions. Bloomberg reports: "Lockheed has a contract to build the first 10 of the satellites designed to provide a more accurate version of the Global Positioning System used for everything from the military's targeting of terrorists to turn-by-turn directions for civilians' smartphones. The program's latest setback may affect a pending Air Force decision on whether to open the final 22 satellites to competition from Lockheed rivals Boeing Co. and Northrop Grumman Corp. 'This was an avoidable situation and raised significant concerns with Lockheed Martin subcontractor management/oversight and Harris program management,' Teague said in a Dec. 21 message to congressional staff obtained by Bloomberg News. The parts in question are ceramic capacitors that have bedeviled the satellite project. They take higher-voltage power from the satellite's power system and reduce it to a voltage required for a particular subsystem. Last year, the Air Force and contractors discovered that Harris hadn't conducted tests on the components, including how long they would operate without failing, that should have been completed in 2010. Now, the Air Force says it found that Harris spent June to October of last year doing follow-up testing on the wrong parts instead of samples of the suspect capacitors installed on the first three satellites. Harris 'immediately notified Lockheed and the government' after a post-test inspection, Teague said in his message." So, the subcontractor first failed to do the required tests, then they did the tests on the wrong parts. Sounds like the kind of quality control problems we have seen recently in Russia and Japan. The worst part? The contract is a cost-plus contract, which means the U.S. tax payer has to absorb the additional costs for fixing the screw-up, not Lockheed Martin or its subcontractor.
Noise filtering.
Often these DC-DC stepdown converters can leave lots of ringing on the DC Rails (bot input and output). The capacitors (chosen for their ability to both absorb the peak and fill the trough of the ring at the requisite frequency) are responsible for making that DC nice and smooth.
When they fail it can be an open (common, and problematic) in which case the downstream components and assemblies are subjected to EMI and ring noise that may be out of their tolerance and thus degrade performance (or ultimately fail them); or the caps can fail shorted, which more often than not quickly becomes an open rather violently... unless the power supply dies from being shorted first.
there's the easy reader version.
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Apparently, Harris makes more on their Stingray II units than these sub-assemblies for Lockheed.
I'm sure the lead time on a StingRay is 7~10 working days for delivery, or overnight if you want to pay for the expedited freight.
Obviously they have no scruples.