US-made C-130J Super Hercules that crashed have fake Chinese parts????????
India has plans to buys six more C-130J Super Hercules to augment its transport fleet.
WASHINGTON:
India's newly-acquired American C-130J Super Hercules plane that
crashed last week near Gwalior has been under intense scrutiny in the
United States and Canada after a Senate investigation concluded that
counterfeit parts in the aircraft's display systems could cause it to
"lose data or even go blank altogether" in midflight, with potentially
catastrophic consequences.
A 2011-2012 investigation by the US
Senate armed services committee eventually traced the counterfeit
electronic parts used in the C-130J, C-27J, and many other US military
systems to a company in Shenzhen, China, called Hong Dark Electronic
Trade Company. Hong Dark sold the parts at issue to Global IC Trading
Group, an independent distributor in the US, which in turn sold it to
L-3 Communications Display Systems, which in turn supplied it to
Lockheed Martin, the US military's prime contractor for the C-130J.
Amid scathing observations by the Senate panel, the US air force
suspended and banned Hong Dark in 2012 from competing for government
contracts and subcontracts, but testimony before the armed services
committee showed stunning lapses in the supply chain and procurement
procedures for the military systems, including the C-130J Super
Hercules, six of which New Delhi contracted to buy in 2010 for $1.1
billion, around Rs 1000 crores apiece.
India has plans to buys
six more to augment its transport fleet with the much-acclaimed
aircraft, which has won plaudits for its safety record and its
versatility. The acquisition enables the Indian military to put boots
and supplies on the ground in remote and inhospitable terrain, giving it
matchless reach in the region.
However, the aircraft display
systems itself will now come under scrutiny — if it already hadn't been
under the scanner — although the cause of the Gwalior crash is yet to be
determined. The US Senate committee report is withering in its
observations not only about US procurement and supply chain system, but
also the casual manner in which private contractors treated the issue
once the counterfeit parts were detected.
The story begins in
November 2010 when L-3 Display Systems detected that the company's
in-house failure rate for a chip installed on display units used in
C-130J and C-27J had more than tripled from 8.5 per cent to 27 per cent.
L-3 also noticed that the same part had previously failed on a fielded
military plane. The company sent the chips for testing, which resulted
in identification of "multiple abnormalities," with the tester
concluding that the parts were "suspect counterfeit."
"Failure
of the memory chip could cause a display unit to show a degraded image,
lose data, or even go black altogether," the Senate report said, noting
that "unfortunately, L-3 Display Systems had already installed parts
from the suspect lot on more than 400 of its display units," including
those intended for the C-27J, as well as the C-130J.
In effect,
what the IAF's court of inquiry will need to look at is whether India
received any of the contaminated display units in the six C-130J it
bought from the US, and if it did, whether the US, including Lockheed
Martin, alerted IAF to it. India's own procurement process, including
whether the buyer tracked and followed up the troubles associated with
the C-130J, including the Senate's investigation, will also have to be
reviewed.
At least in Canada, another C-130J customer, a CBC
investigation in early 2013 highlighted the troubles with the aircraft's
instrument panel, although the government there glossed over the issue
initially.
But the Senate investigation offers a disturbing
picture of people up the supply chain not particularly alarmed at the
contamination of crucial display systems with counterfeit parts.
According to the senate report (page 35), following the detection of the
fakes, L-3 Display Systems on November 4, 2010, issued a part purge
notification, quarantining the company's own stock of the suspect memory
chips.
It did not, however, recommend to its customer that
assemblies affected by the suspect counterfeit chips be returned for
replacement of those chips. As a result, hundreds of display units
intended for and installed on C-130Js and C-27Js included the suspect
counterfeit memory chip, well after its discovery by L-3 Display
Systems.
Lockheed Martin, the US military's prime contractor
for the C-130J, does not cover itself with glory either in the episode.
The Senate report notes that when L-3 notified Lockheed of the problem,
Lockheed engineers discussed the matter internally and decided "no
action" was necessary and the display units did not need to be returned
for repair. Lockheed Martin also "did not formally notify the Air Force
of the suspect counterfeit chip in the C-130J."
According to
Senate investigators, while Lockheed Martin told the Air Force that the
suspect counterfeit parts were "functionally complaint" to authentic
genuine parts, the Air Force was apparently not informed that the
failure rate of the part had tripled during acceptance and environmental
stress testing.
The Senate report concluded that since its
investigation, hearing and public release of information about the
counterfeit chips, the US Air Force had reported that they are
aggressively taking action to remove the parts in question, audit the
supply chains etc. But as of March 2012, the report noted, Lockheed
Martin had removed and replaced only a handful of the display units in
the C-130J that are affected by the suspect counterfeit memory chip.
The worrying part for Indian defense planners is that the Senate panel
talks of several other US military platforms, such as Boeing's
P8A-Poseidon — a custom-made variant of which has been supplied to the
Indian Navy — being contaminated with counterfeit Chinese parts.
According to the US air force, "approximately 84,000 suspect
counterfeit electronic parts purchased from Hong Dark entered the DoD
supply chain, and many of these parts have been installed on DoD
aircraft."
A
recently acquired C-130J transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force
crashed 72 miles west of Gwalior airbase on Friday morning, killing at
least five personnel on board. (AFP)
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