GAO Second Guesses DoD on Chinese Materials
Pentagon investigators say they have “found” evidence that Chinese materials were illegally used to make F-35 parts, and further that other weapons systems such as the B-1B and the F-16 also used illegal Chinese materials. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/10/us-usa-china-weapons-idUSBREA291UK20140310
To analysts at http://HamiltonFinanceServices.com (HFS, where former DoD investigators and prosecutors who have dealt with precisely these sort of allegations before now work), this news offers insight not about Pentagon and US Government Accounting Office (GAO) diligence, but rather about how dumbly they behave in the name of national security.
Here’s the scenario: Laws require the Pentagon to buy weapons made with materials, parts, and systems “made in America.” Of course, with tinkering by an active Congress the phrase “made in America” has expanded to include allies of America specified on a US State Department list of approved sources, such as Japan, Britain, France, etc. China is not on the list, so if materials such as metals used to make cheap little magnets for expensive radar systems come from China, the law says it’s illegal and the parts must be replaced with others from approved sources. But remember that Congress is like a ship of active little rats who gnaw at every morsel.
With Congressional approval, DoD obtained and exercised authority in a few cases to waive the “Buy American Act” stringent prohibitions against buying parts composed of Chinese materials. However, not everyone in Congress agreed with those waivers, despite the big weapons makers relying on the waivers to produce their weapons on time under their DoD contracts.
So now Congress is pushing its tools, the GAO and the Comptroller General, to question the waivers granted several years ago in hopes of compelling those big weapons makers to pay for retrofitting the radars with magnets made from approved sources.
Of course, those weapons makers have literally thousands of lawyers, more even than all of the lawyers in the US Department of Justice and DoD combined, ready to wave the waivers in the faces of administrative and federal judges who will eventually hear these cases.
But DoD uses another foul tactic to avoid such litigation by refusing to do business with the big weapons makers who don’t pay quickly and quietly, in this dumb or dumber game. It rarely works, of course, because some members of Congress feel more loyalty to the weapons makers than to the government tail chasers.
As stated, dumb or dumber. That’s the defense contractor business in a nutshell.
What do you think?
I think Made in America should mean MADE IN AMERICA… period. End of story. 🙂
One ongoing, somewhat new debate focuses on whether it is even possible for the US to use just US resources, parts, and systems. Most manufacturers have argued it is physically impossible because of the metals and similar raw materials needed for contemporary weapons systems. So for the foreseeable future, there never will be a pure Made In America when it comes to DoD contracts for weapons.
Things made in a single country have to be simple and primitive. The world is one market. Even Russia, which is by far the biggest country in the world, is nowhere near self-sufficient in all the high tech materials. I suppose it is usually [i]possible[/i] to use substitutes that either cost more, are not as good, or both.
I know some scientists are worried about that the US is sitting on most of the world helium reserves and squander it on party balloons, since it is non-renewable and essential in many applications.
One distant scientific marvel close to alchemy, to me, is LENR technology that actually appears to produce new materials in very small quantities. The LENR results have been consistently duplicated since about 2002 to produce tritium and helium from heavy water using palladium anodes. In the past 10 years in NASA and DOE science circles, this contemporary version of alchemy is big news, but the public won’t hear much about it for another couple of decades, according to the analysts in my firm. So for the ‘foreseeable future,’ as I noted earlier, international interdependency is a fact of life for all complex systems, meaning to include all weapons systems plus other more commercial things.
The other issue here may be cost…
As these items are probably built to the most exacting specifications they would come off limited production lines and require long and exacting testing testing to ensure they meet spec. That means lots of $.
With the current mantra of ‘Cheapest is Best’ it is no wonder outsourcing these parts to China has become an issue.