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本帖最后由 lilyma06 于 2011-11-9 15:40 编辑
U.S. defense equipment has been outfitted with counterfeit parts from China
原文链接：http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/china-counterfeit-parts-in-us-military-boeing-l3-aircraft/2011/11/08/gIQAYRy30M_story.html
By Tony Capaccio,
Nov. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Dozens of suspected counterfeit parts have been installed on U.S. defense equipment from Raytheon Co., L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. and Boeing Co., including aircraft deployed to Afghanistan.
The Senate Armed Services Committee found counterfeit parts -- usually from China -- on at least seven aircraft, including the Lockheed Martin Corp. C-130J transport plane, Boeing P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol and L-3 27J Spartan transport.
“Suspect electronic parts from China were installed on military systems and subsystems that were manufactured by Raytheon Co., L-3 Communications and Boeing,” said the memo from the committee’s staff, released yesterday before a hearing today.
None of the examples were connected to instances of lives lost or dramatic failures causing an aircraft crash, Michigan Senator Carl Levin, the committee chairman, said.
Still, the committee staff has “identified lots of places where, unless that correction was made, there was real fear that those kind of disastrous consequences could take place,” Levin said.
China supports the fight against counterfeit goods, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a briefing today in Beijing.
“China’s government is actively promoting cooperation in fighting fake or counterfeit goods with relevant authorities in other countries and such efforts are welcome,” Hong said.
Deployed Aircraft
Separately, the Pentagon’s Defense Criminal Investigative Service is investigating about 40 cases involving various counterfeit items, Assistant Pentagon Inspector General for Investigative Operations James Ives said in an e-mail. The agency is conducting 225 investigations “involving potentially defective or substandard parts and components,” he said.
“The cases may involve counterfeits or improperly made parts,” Ives said.
Two new L-3 Air Force C-27J Spartans deployed to Afghanistan have displays with suspect parts, according to the committee. L3’s Integrated Systems unit notified the Air Force on Sept. 19 that 38 suspect video memory chips were installed in the display units on eight of the first 11 aircraft delivered.
Memory Chip Risks
The L-3 unit that made the displays learned of the suspect memory chips in November 2010, the memo said. The committee traced the chips to Hong Dark Electronic Trade in Shenzhen, China, which also delivered an earlier counterfeit part L-3 discovered in October 2009, it said.
The display units are made by L-3 Communications Display Systems and provide pilots with diagnostic data including engine status, fuel usage, location and warning messages.
The C-27J displays were among more than 500 containing suspect Chinese parts sold to the Air Force, Navy and defense contractors for installation also on C-130J and C-17 transport and Marine Corps CH-46 helicopters, the memo said.
“Failure of the memory chip could cause a display unit to show a degraded image, lose data or even go blank,” the memo said.
L-3 spokeswoman Jennifer Barton said the company is “reviewing the matter.”
Serious Problem
Arizona Senator John McCain, the senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said the origin of the counterfeits is cloaked by passing them through a chain of three or four sham companies.
China “should be more vigilant,” he said today in an interview on Bloomberg TV. “They know where it comes from.”
“The fact that defective parts are in aircraft that are deployed in Afghanistan is evidence of the seriousness of the problem,” Levin said in an e-mail to Bloomberg News.
The Senate committee’s investigative staff amassed a database with 1,800 cases of counterfeiting totaling about 1 million parts. It scrutinized 100 cases and found that 70 percent of the suspect parts were traced to Chinese firms, according to the memo.
“Nearly 20 percent of the remaining cases were tracked to the United Kingdom and Canada -- known resale points for counterfeit electronic parts from China,” it said.
The panel is considering ways to tighten rules against the counterfeits, Levin told reporters, including requiring the defense contractors to pay for replacing the parts with genuine items.
“There’s a lot of possibilities here,” Levin said. “Right now, there is ambiguity in some of the contracts,” he said. “It depends on some extent as to the wording of the contract, whether it is cost-plus or fixed price,” he said.
Legislation “will force contractors to tell” their subcontractors and their subcontractor’s suppliers that they need to make sure the parts being sold are legitimate, he said.
“If you out the onus on all of our contractors they will get that message back to their suppliers as well,” he said.
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狗仔卡
发表于 2011-11-9 14:17
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