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Suspected counterfeit components found in ejection seat after fatal F-16 crash
- Syonyk 4y agoWell, that's terrifying. The people who built the ejection seats seem oddly casual about their material sourcing, and "if the damned things would actually work if needed." You're having a very, very bad day if you need the seat, the last thing you want to worry about is if it's going to fail because of counterfeit parts.
- themitigating 4y ago"The company we got it from certified it was real" - supplier Court time "Prove my client knew it was fake, remember innocent until proven guilty + beyond reasonable doubt" - defense lawyer Acquitted Court costs for US government - 5 million "Let's add new regulations to make sure they have to test parts" - some person "We need to stop big government" - Republicans "There's too many regulations how can I stay in business, guess I'll raise prices for the government" - supplier "Why does this part cost so much, corruption, conspiracy, blah" - hackernews comment
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y agoCorruption and conspiracy resulting from greedy people. Solve for the basest instincts and watch crime evaporate.
- ccvannorman 4y agoAre all your comments like this? Would love to train a holistic scenario condensation language model to turn complex stories into minimized sensibile lines. :-] (e.g. wouldn't it be nice for the average voter to have access to condensed information like this?)
- themitigating 4y agoThey aren't, feel free to inspect them. I'm boiling down what I see as the hypocracy of most people and how quickly we forget why rules exist
- elros 4y agoI believe you meant to spell "hypocrisy", but actually "hypocracy" is such a wonderful neologism because it does seem that, wherever we are, we're governed by hypocrites.
- encryptluks2 4y agoIf only there were a documentary called Hypocracy, with just a bunch of footage of hypocritical things done by politicians. Heck, it could have a weekly segment it happens so often.
- unlikelymordant 4y agoHypo - A prefix of Greek origin, cognate with sub- of Latin origin, and meaning primarily ‘under,’ either in place or in degree (less,' ‘less than’). I cant help but feel a hypocracy is a great word for small government
- elros 4y agoGood point. That would actually follow a similar formation process as the most commonly used term for this, which is "minarchy".
- this_steve_j 4y agoI believe this is among the most cryptic and niche compliments I have ever come across on any social platform, but would need to have a sufficiently large sample size of similar compliments to train a language model.
- behringer 4y agoMilitary courts operate differently.
- ErikVandeWater 4y agoIf the government were competent, it wouldn't require proof beyond a reasonable doubt to recoup substantial compensation for faulty parts.
- giantg2 4y agoI would guess it's already built into the contract.
- giantg2 4y ago"Acquitted" And blacklisted from doing business with the government.
- kube-system 4y agoBlacklist Lockheed, Collins, and Teledyne? What are we going to take to war, Cessnas with water balloons on board?
- giantg2 4y agoIt would likely be Teledyne. Although they are more likely to just be penalized in some other way, especially since they now own FLIR.
- tyingq 4y agoThat particular C-Corp or LLC, sure. The people behind it that know all the secret sauce, connections, etc, to get awarded contracts just go mint a new one.
- Jtsummers 4y agoIf only. Big companies won't be blocked, small ones change names and nominal CEO/owners and carry on like nothing happened.
- giantg2 4y agoI'm pretty sure they also ban executives now.
- nonethewiser 4y agoSo basically everyone is at fault, including the standard of innocent until proven guilty. Except Democrats.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y agoConvenient
- brigandish 4y agoIf the government took the supplier to court for supplying counterfeit parts it would most likely be in civil court[0]. The standard is preponderance of the evidence[1], which is much lower than that in criminal court: > Under the preponderance standard, the burden of proof is met when the party with the burden convinces the fact finder that there is a greater than 50% chance that the claim is true. This is the burden of proof in a civil trial. If the supplier were criminally liable (as they also can be, for trafficking in counterfeit goods or services[2]) then because the bar is higher the prosecution would (should) only move forward if they believe they have the requisite evidence to meet that standard. As it is, the widow is taking the suppliers to court in civil court[3]: > Now, two years later, the 32-year-old has filed a federal civil lawsuit against defense giant Lockheed Martin, Collins Aerospace and several sections of Teledyne Technologies, alleging that components of her husband's ejection seat may have been counterfeit, leading to his death on June 30, 2020. The aforementioned law was passed in Dec 2011 by the House of Representatives, which the Republicans held a majority in, and the Senate, which the Democrats held by a slim majority[4][5]. I'm not sure what your comment is about other than trying to appear knowledgeable through cynicism. Ironic that you would complain about others' HN comments. [0] https://aronsonllc.com/government-looks-to-contractors-to-stem-the-flow-of-counterfeit-parts/ https://aronsonllc.com/government-looks-to-contractors-to-st... [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/preponderance_of_the_evidence https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/preponderance_of_the_evidenc... [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2320 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2320 [3] https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/09/14/widow-of-f-16-pilot-alleges-possible-counterfeit-ejection-seat-parts-lawsuit-against-defense.html https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/09/14/widow-of-f-16... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act_for_Fiscal_Year_2012 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/112th_United_States_Congress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/112th_United_States_Congress
- Crosseye_Jack 4y ago> Prove my client knew it was fake, remember innocent until proven guilty + beyond reasonable doubt It’s a civil case against the contractors not the government, it carries a much lower burden of proof, just needs to prove preponderance of the evidence (more than 50% chance of the claim being true). Plus you have discovery and depositions to help build your case. Oh and if they don’t comply with discovery, well then the judge will just find them liable and then the case will just be about how much money they owe (see the Alex Jones cases going on right now).
- toss1 4y ago>>"Prove my client knew it was fake, remember innocent until proven guilty + beyond reasonable doubt" - defense lawyer >>Acquitted It does not work like that. The client has already signed off, under penalty of perjury, that the parts ARE NOT FAKE, and that the company and the parts (respectively) comply with any number of Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) requirements applicable to the contract. If the part is bad, it is going to be up to the "client" to prove that his statements were not false.
- vhold 4y agoI think that's exactly how it would have gone done except for the fact Teledyne is accused of replacing the counterfeit parts when the board was sent to them for inspection, which would almost certainly prove they knew they were fake.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mshockwave 4y agoBefore reading the article I was guessing the seat failed to ignite. But it was actually worse -- the seat was ejected but the chute didn't open, what an awful way to die.
- kurupt213 4y agoStaying in the plane would have been better
- trhway 4y agoWithout pronouncing any judgement (as if there are any options here) just commenting on technical side, I wonder, given the age of the design, if the original components weren't available anymore, and somebody just substituted the stuff with whatever closest was available. That reminds about how at the end of the 1990ies some electronics components sent to the space station Mir to make repairs were "sourced" from a large flea market in St.Petersburg ("Avtovo" for who knows/remembers, had a large electronics and computer section).
- bityard 4y agoWhen repairing military avionics, you have to use the exact parts approved by the military from sources supplied by the military. The government works very hard to make sure that parts for its aircraft are available, even if they are expensive. If the parts aren't available then you simply can't repair the unit without some sort of arduous waiver process. Anything else is a breach of contract at best.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- melq 4y agoMilitary contractors don't run down to radioshack when they're low on transistors.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y agoThey would if Radio Shack carried such stuff anymore
- p_l 4y agoSometimes they ransack ebay for specific complex chips though...
- CobaltFire 4y agoIn my previous life as an F/A-18 avionics technician I ordered from Mouser and Newark more than a few times when supply didn’t have the parts.
- prvit 4y agoNothing here suggests that those counterfeit components caused a malfunction.
- djcannabiz 4y ago> “The parts … are strictly considered suspect at this time” This looks pretty bad! but I know literally nothing about ejection seats
- prvit 4y agoAre they considered suspect because they're counterfeit, or are they considered suspect because those specific parts appear to have malfunctioned?
- giantg2 4y agoThe article does suggest that, calling them "suspect". It does not confirm it though.
- squarefoot 4y agoActually it's even worse. A batch of counterfeit parts can be blamed on the supplier, but destroying evidence in this case is entirely on the manufacturer.
- m00x 4y agoThis could be very bad for the people in charge. A metallurgist got 10 years for falsifying reports of steel robustness recently[1], and another 15 years for uniforms made in China. Selling counterfeits to the military could even get you jailed on treason charges. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59186655 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59186655 [2] https://futurism.com/the-byte/fake-military-gear-china https://futurism.com/the-byte/fake-military-gear-china
- 650REDHAIR 4y agoThe punishment should be even more severe. It’s a national security risk. The federal government needs more internal audits.
- dc-programmer 4y agoThis is why folks like Michael Flynn should be no where near positions of power in the military hierarchy
- encryptluks2 4y agoI agree but I think the corruption has existed for a long time and it is going to take a lot of changes and legislation. Basically, maybe in 30 years or more.
- dc-programmer 4y agoI saw a gap to make that point and shot it. There is definitely formidable institutional inertia blocking meaningful change. I’m hoping history does rhyme and we’ll see an adoption of civil service reform policies by both parties like in the late 1800s
- Spooky23 4y agoI’m sure you will. Post COVID hiring will almost certainly result in a lot of idiots as .gov compensation is way out of line with the market.
- ren_engineer 4y ago>According to Air Force Research Laboratory slides dated Aug. 3, 2020, however, the service suspected that several transistors and microchips inside the sequencer were fake >The lab also found signs that Teledyne had destroyed evidence related to the case, the lawsuit said. Teledyne appeared to have replaced five microchips on the sequencer before sending it to the lab 3rd world tier corruption and fraud. Based on the number of failed and severely cost overrun military projects I'd say it applies to way more than just this situation
- markdown 4y ago> 3rd world tier corruption and fraud. USA corporations trying their hand at vertical integration. Normally they stick to 1st world tier corruption (directly buying off politicians) which is a scale far greater than anything the third world can imagine.
- kurupt213 4y agoMy first thought was that someone stole components. There is no reason for this kind of fraud. The government pays whether stuff is on time or not.
- jorblumesea 4y agoWhat? You replace real working parts with fake/non-working stuff, and you pocket the diff in cost. You cut all QA b/c you know it's fake, no need to test. The government pays, but, you have a much higher profit margin if you just fake everything.
- sieabahlpark 4y ago
- killjoywashere 4y agoI'd say it's far more likely that Teledyne let an unauthorized, or improperly cleared, technician touch the production line, who then stole the parts for intelligence purposes and replaced them with stuff he acquired by other means (desoldered them from home stereos, purchased on eBay, whatever). That would motivate a cover-up. No American, particularly someone working in the defense industry, wants fighter pilots to die. Unless of course they have other allegiances.
- nraynaud 4y agoand recently a Rafale seat didn't ignite because of a sequencer issue too (I don't know if it's the same manufacturer)
- renewiltord 4y ago> To keep an eye on potential degradation, contractors tested 60 sequencers in 2017 and 2018, the lawsuit said. Three were flagged for further evaluation. Teledyne found that two of the three units would have functioned properly in an ejection. > Two years after that testing, the lawsuit claims, the companies hadn’t said whether the third unit passed muster. Still, the Air Force relied on the test data when it decided to continue using the sequencer that ended up in Schmitz’s F-16, the lawsuit said. I don't want to be too facetious, but if you very eagerly said that 2 out of 3 worked and say nothing about the last, I'm going to assume that last one completely failed.
- jononomo 4y agoSheesh, this seems like a major national security issue. I would expect more than one person to go to prison for a couple decades over this.
- hsuduebc2 4y ago>The lab also found signs that Teledyne had destroyed evidence related to the case, the lawsuit said. Teledyne appeared to have replaced five microchips on the sequencer before sending it to the lab How exactly is this not a big red flag that something's fishy?
- ajross 4y agoSurely it is a big red flag, but with military hardware yelling about its shortcomings publicly is tantamount to advertising that your deterrent is broken. You don't do that. Note that the original report was apparently not made public.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y agoHere is how to fix the counterfeit supply chain issue: You execute the CEO and board of directors of the companies that had the contract for treason and sabotage. You do that once, and I bet the next CEO takes supply chain issues seriously. EDIT: And before you tell me that you wouldn’t be able to find CEOs if you executed the bad ones, there are lots of Americans who work in coal mines, oil rigs, and high rise construction where they face a risk of death for far less money.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y agoSomeone should be getting manslaughter for the poor bastard they killed.
- Maursault 4y agoNot manslaughter, felony murder.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_murder_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_murder_rule
- zepppotemkin 4y agoWorks for china
- rasz 4y agoBoeing employee: Taking bids on a CEO contract, discount for disgruntled spouses and competing military suppliers.
- fakethenews2022 4y agoFor a far better take than all the fly by commentators here, there is a ex military pilot who did a video on this a year or so ago. The seat already had issues, was scheduled for maintenance but that maintenance was constantly deferred, and was finally scheduled for maintenance for shortly after the mishap. https://youtu.be/z363_Yjup0U https://youtu.be/z363_Yjup0U The maintenance discussion starts around 35:58 into the video.
- justin66 4y agoHis videos are great, but when this video was made, he was unaware of some of the worst details of the story of the seat’s maintenance. (Potential counterfeit parts, etc)
- KennyBlanken 4y agoOooooor, and bear with me: he was part of a disinformation campaign to make it look like it was the fault of maintenance tech and supervisor, not a major defense contractor.
- fakethenews2022 4y agoYes. But I also think the details he provided are necessary to fully understand what was happening and I didn't see them anywhere else in the comments. Things like the sequencer was going to be replaced by a new model.
- londons_explore 4y agoThe real offender here is the design of the seat... The design should be self-testing continuously. If any wire, microchip, or other component were to go bad inside the ejector seat, it should flash a big warning light on the dashboard saying "unsafe to fly". In the case of an ejector seat sequencer, the electronics could run through the full ejection process, but with the power supply to the explosive detonators super low. Then another system detects that the right detonators are being activated at the right time. If they aren't... red light and buzzer. If your design is good, cheap parts won't make it fail dangerously. Cheap parts will just lead to more time being repaired.
- Wowfunhappy 4y agoWhat if the electronics that run through the full ejection process are counterfeit?
- paulryanrogers 4y agoThen design it to fail safely, so if any one part in the sequence is out of line it a red warning light goes off.
- gilded-lilly 4y agoSounds dangerous. What if there’s a power surge?
- londons_explore 4y agoIt's the same design as done on car airbags... They test themselves all the time and will put a red light on the dashboard if the test ever fails...
- mjevans 4y agoA pre-flight readiness check could do the 'dry run' with the explosives redirected to a test rig instead. As an armchair engineer, I would imagine this check shortly prior to munitions load, which would also be the best time to validate the rest of the platform fitness.
- p_l 4y agoIn a way, it's worse than the case few years ago in Poland [1] - there, the company that ended up servicing the ejection seat was just incompetent and no attempts at destruction of evidence happened as far as I know. [1] A shearable component was replaced with thicker part, with larger strain capacity, resulting in pilot not separating properly from the ejection seat
- markdown 4y agoReminds me of this thread by the Ukrainian govt: https://twitter.com/NAZK_gov/status/1501960273313345536 https://twitter.com/NAZK_gov/status/1501960273313345536
- goatherders 4y agoI used to own a semiconductor distribution business. The amount of refurbished and counterfeit material out there is staggering. There is more money in obsolete parts than most people realize and, as a result, selling refurbs is incredibly lucrative. I'm talking 100x markup on a 5k reel when the customer needs 10pcs. This story, while sad, is not the least bit surprising.
- girvo 4y agoEven here in small-scale embedded land we get bitten by it from apparently reputable vendors. We've had to cultivate direct relationships with certain companies to avoid it, and setup a whole acceptance pipeline for some of our parts. Frustrating as hell.
- jeffbee 4y agoSo, I've never done anything where lives and health are on the line, but I've built tons of stuff out of salvaged space-age transistors. What's particularly wrong with refurbishment as a practice? There is a lot of good material out there, much of which is no longer made and has no contemporary equivalent.
- ndiddy 4y agoThe issue is that the process of refurbishment is fairly hard on the components. Companies in China will obtain decades old ewaste boards and then have workers hold the boards over fires to melt the solder and pull the chips out with pliers. The chips are then sanded, "blacktopped" (covered in a tar-like coating that looks like the IC plastic), and re-marked. This crude process (exposure to extreme heat, no controlling for ESD, etc) can result in chips that have latent defects, on top of the unknown age and uptime of the chips. Another issue is that companies will commonly lie on the re-marking, doing stuff like changing the grade from consumer to military spec, lowering the access time, upgrading the die revision, or mislabeling the chip entirely. For example, Amiga and Atari ST fans have had issues buying Motorola 68060 chips from Asian vendors, as they will commonly relabel 68LC060 chips (which don't have an FPU) as regular 68060 chips. More information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k72SFBOZ_lw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k72SFBOZ_lw
- aaron695 4y ago[dead]
- libpcap 4y agoChina.
- rsynnott 4y agoEh? Teledyne is a publicly traded American company.
- nradov 4y agoFor those who want to understand the full details of this mishap, former Air Force F-16 pilot C. W. Lemoine did a detailed analysis of the public report. https://youtu.be/z363_Yjup0U https://youtu.be/z363_Yjup0U
- DisjointedHunt 4y agoI find the cover up worse than the counterfeits. We have a family who lost a bright young man who volunteered to serve his country and lay his life down to protect the ones he loved. And what did the Air Force brass do? Everything they could to deny him an honorable send off. They pinned the blame squarely on the soldier who died . This would be low for even the communists. I hope they rot in prison and the Feres doctrine is amended to allow suits for malice like we see here.
- triggercut 4y agoObligatory Preface: I've never worked on defence projects but... The issue of initial quality and provenance of the chips aside, I don't understand how this wasn't picked during Functional Performance Testing (FAT) of the system before final acceptance. For such a critical safety system you would expect that all tests were performed and that it was operating correctly within it's design parameters. You would expect whoever was responsible for procuring (either principal or contractor) would have witness points were a suitably qualified person from their side (or third party independent verifier) would witness and sign-off on the test being performed to spec, and the results were within expectations. This is why these processes exist. NB: The test in this case might not even need the actual parachute, just testing that the circuit pulses at the right time in the right place, or that a solenoid activates. Then again, maybe it did pass all these checks but the poor quality of the parts meant they degraded at an accelerated rate because they weren't designed to operate in those conditions. Who knows. As things get smaller and more abstract (digital v. analogue) it's much more difficult for us to rely or even expect traditional methods of "trust but verify" to satisfy our requirements. It's becoming more and more incumbent on the end-owner to know their asset as it becomes harder and harder to understand it.
- pGuitar 4y ago
- lavenderfieldsb 4y ago[flagged]
- dudeinjapan 4y agoAs a US taxpayer this enrages me. Whoever is responsible for the fraud should be jailed for manslaughter.
- Maursault 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_murder_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_murder_rule
- dudeinjapan 4y agoGood point. "3rd degree murder". Depends on jurisdiction tho.
- Joel_Mckay 4y agoTook many years for one to understand people can be malicious and or incompetent at the same time, but the key lesson was understanding the liability is the same. At sea, we were told the legal system does not make a distinction for the maritime zones. If you make a mistake and someone dies, than it is considered a murder rather than manslaughter or criminal negligence. If someone knowingly used counterfeit parts, than it could fall under espionage laws as well. i.e. the public will not know why someone was thrown into a hole for 40 years.
- timcavel 4y ago
- iancmceachern 4y agoI've seen this several times in projects, not in defence though. I've heard of it there though. In one instance, we were building a bunch of very bright lcd displays for big video ads in times Square. This was when it was a cutting edge thing to do. To deliver on our project, we needed to buy every single Golden dragon 2 white led in the world at the time (200k or so). We bought the entire stock of digikey, RS, mouser, etc. all at once. For each led also needed a zener diode, which we had similar issues sourcing. Once all the boards were built zeners started blowing up and literally popping off the boards. It turns out about a third of thr zener we bought, from reputable suppliers, were counterfeit. No way to know until they blow up.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y agoI'm pretty sure that this is happening with Bluetooth chips, as well. Seems the way to find out if they are bad, is wait a year. I have had a whole bunch of $100+ headsets crap out, after eight months, and have had cheap $20 exercise headphones last for five years.
- jessaustin 4y agoThe Pentagon is not judged on its performance in war. (That's convenient, because the Pentagon hasn't won a war in generations.) Rather, the Pentagon is judged by its ability to increase profits of armaments manufacturers. Since the case described in TFA features increased profits, it is not surprising. The only potential for surprise would be the possibility that one or more executives of these firms could be punished for this. Instead, one expects that some low-level technician will be selected as a scapegoat.
- miguelazo 4y agoSuppliers were probably reselling trash from Amazon.
- JohnJamesRambo 4y agoOur era is so fake even our ejector seats are fake.
- trasz 4y agoI wonder why that electronics is actually there. I'd rather expect something pyrotechnic, some contraption out of delay fuses. Is there a source that explains what needs to happen under the hood that requires electronics?
- _djo_ 4y agoTo maximise survivability the seat needs to be able to orient itself optimally, then you need a number of sensors reading air speed, temperature, air pressure, and acceleration to determine when the best time for each sequence step is. For instance, you don't want to deploy the drogue while the rockets are still firing. You also don't want to deploy it if the seat is oriented in the wrong direction and the drogue might get stuck in the seat. Then, you don't want to release the main chute until the seat has stabilised and the speed is right. You also want to control the speed of release and inflation depending on the altitude at which the ejection happened, with a more rapid release at the lowest altitudes. Early seats used simple delay fuses and didn't have the ability to sequence events based on sensor inputs, resulting in a lot more post-ejection deaths and injuries.
- nickdothutton 4y agoFake components are an enormous problem in these fat military contracts. There are any number of ways they can find their way into the supply chain at different stages (component, sub-assembly, assembly, finished products, service/replacement/upgrade boards). Often the fakes aren’t “terrible” but just arent 100% within spec.
- Workaccount2 4y agoReally late here, but I have some first hand experience with this exact issue (raiding our business and everything.) To be brief, and what I assume happened, is that military electronics specs lots of old outdated/obsolete electronic components. It can be exceedingly difficult to get that part changed (if it works don't fix it) and often can be exceedingly difficult to find parts from authorized distributors. On the back end too, those distributors also need to ensure they are getting legit parts. SO what can end up happening is you desperately need a part to move production along, and you yank on all your distributors to get you some. One of those distributors then goes out and gets "contaminated" parts from a "usually good" source. You end up with those parts, test them all, they test good, put them in, and by doing so assume all responsibility for them. "All responsibility" means you are legally liable for using that part. Cue FBI raid. Really the core issue is that the military uses a lot of stuff that works amazing, but is contracted from parts that are long out of production. Updating is a difficult and risky task, because it's not really an "update" as much as a "find similar parts to build the same thing". Which means moving from a tested and known good product, to a brand new untested one. Naturally, there is a lot of resistance to this, and a changing something like a single chip could take a year or more of testing and auth.
- zach_garwood 4y agoWow, this is some real All My Sons type shit. In the play, the protagonist sells defective airplane parts to the US military during WWII, and several planes end up crashing and killing the pilots.
- vhold 4y agoThe lawsuit also says that Teledyne knew that the DRS had a much higher failure rate than advertised and didn't tell the Air Force.