34 Replies to “US weapons ‘full of fake Chinese parts’”

  1. I’m no conspiracy theorist, (ya i kinda am) but seems to me that China has taken all the manufacturing jobs out of the US, bought up all it’s debt and now is supplying bogus contracted armaments to their defense department..
    What could possibly go wrong with all that added together?

  2. “Experts said the problems are not new, and have dated from a decision in the 1990s by the Clinton administration to cut costs by asking the Pentagon to buy “off-the-shelf” electronics, rather than designing its own systems.”
    Yep, ‘mission critical’ takes on a whole new meaning when it is the difference between a dead soldier and live soldier.
    “The only solution the US has is to buy its components from Korea or Japan instead, but then its costs will rise a hundredfold.”
    Well they are just printing money anyway so what is the difference at least they would be buying from ostensible ‘allies’.
    Cheers
    Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
    1st Saint Nicolaas Army
    Army Group “True North”

  3. Good ole Bill Clinton (D)! I seem to recall rumours of his election campaign getting (forbidden) overseas donations from a certain country as well!

  4. Yet, I have 2 Norc rifles which work better than the original US version. However the standard was a lot worse than the American version. If i had my druthers, I’d have bought an American version for a reasonable price.

  5. The US pays such huge sums to China as interest on the US debt held by China that the US, in effect, funds the People’s Liberation Army. At the same time China sells suspect parts that become part of US military hardware and may fail at critical moments. China has it both coming and going.
    The US could buy critical parts from safe sources but that would cost more and the US is broke. Great to be China. Sucks to be the US.

  6. Steve, the contributions came from a Chinese firearms company called Polytech. Owned by the Red Chinese Army.

  7. @ robins111:
    Gives a whole new meaning to the notion of “Manchurian Candidate”…
    Cheers
    Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
    1st Saint Nicolaas Army
    Army Group “True North”

  9. This has been happening for decades. The fake electronic component trade has always been big in China – they have no regard for patents, or trademarks and counterfeit Intel, AMD processors have been popped out of garage factories for years. They have become more sophisticated in their bogus packaging and production volumes have soared in recent years. They even counterfeit the popular brand logic chips, tantalum caps and other small outline surface mount passives. They sell these into the far east electronic manufacturing supply chain through unscrupulous vendors. They sure as hell counterfeit components in military grade because the trade is so lucrative. The logos and packaging look identical to the real thing. You need sharp quality inspectors at your vendor’s incoming materials process to weed this crap out.
    I’m amazed this counterfeit Chinese crap is functional enough to make it all the way to integration/installation in mil-grade circuits and pass testing before it’s installed in military field ordnance. In my day most of this counterfeit crap failed in simple in-house burn-in testing of sub assemblies.
    The military should be more careful with its vendor selection if it’s getting too much counterfeit componentry in its systems. Someone in supply chain management FUed big time.
    Could this be what’s escallating the costs of the f35s ??

  10. China’s economy is fake too.
    Very little of what makes them so ‘prosper” is either legal, ethical or moral.
    China’s bubble will burst, just give it time.

  11. God help us if we ever need to defend against the Chinese.
    One ‘virus’ command from their country could make Skynet look like a pacman video game.
    Talking in Ottawa with some folks about this and they are ‘suppose’ to check the components when they arrive, but due to the nature of timing, schedules and so on, not everything is checked.
    Not just the military, commercial planes and their engine parts and such have the same issue.
    It, unfortunately, is just a matter of time before things happen.
    Y2CK? Pre-programmed Chinese Millennium bug?
    Almost as funny as in the 80’s when the Canadian Navy was using tubes for their radios and the contractor was out of Montreal, who got the tubes from Russia…

  13. Had to laugh the other day reading about the new economic power house of the USA circa 1840. Not only were they manufacturing everything cheaper but they were ignoring patents in Britain.
    Apparently the ongoing hacking of USA computer systems by the Chinese government is accelerating. Econmic and political info is being stolen steadily.

  15. An interesting article. To quote, ‘Song Xiaojun, a former Peoples’ Liberation Army officer who has become a nationalistic commentator in the Chinese media said the US had “got itself into the position it is in”‘”The only solution the US has is to buy its components from Korea or Japan instead, but then its costs will rise a hundredfold.”
    The main problem the US faces is not with its suppliers, however: ‘Leon Panetta, the US Defence secretary, acknowledged that he may have to cut new weapons purchases.’ It is the people running the whole show.

  16. johnbrooks nails the real problem with Chinese counterfeit chips and other electronics: they can be programmed to fail on command or to rerout sensitive battlefield information back to the enemy.
    In any case, the American military has known about this “minor issue” for many years and has done nothing about it.

  17. “Yet, I have 2 Norc rifles which work better than the original US version. However the standard was a lot worse than the American version. If i had my druthers, I’d have bought an American version for a reasonable price.”
    Hey robins111 nice try….your Norinco rifle is a piece of junk, as is your post. You wouldn’t know what a quality rifle was if you were hit with the butt stock! Besides, you save a few hundred bucks and have this thing how far from your face?

  18. don’t worry …. chinese armaments are built with couterfeit parts too … equipment failures are more of a problem across the bamboo curtain
    for an example of a western country undertaking a successful surgical strike against a site protected with Russian S-300s:
    Israel Struck Syrian Nuclear Project, Analysts Say
    By DAVID E. SANGER and MARK MAZZETTI
    Published: October 14, 2007
    WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 — Israel’s air attack on Syria last month was directed against a site that Israeli and American intelligence analysts judged was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, apparently modeled on one North Korea has used to create its stockpile of nuclear weapons fuel, according to American and foreign officials with access to the intelligence reports.
    The description of the target addresses one of the central mysteries surrounding the Sept. 6 attack, and suggests that Israel carried out the raid to demonstrate its determination to snuff out even a nascent nuclear project in a neighboring state.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/washington/14weapons.html?pagewanted=all

  19. John Brooks – up until 1990 (when they were replaced) our long range radar sites used Czech-made tubes and the Czechs were behind the Iron Curtain when they were bought. No western manufacturer still produced vacuum tubes.

  20. Aw jeeze becker, you got me… I wouldn’t know anything about rifles… yup, you are the man…. you do know that the Springfield M1a has an investment cast receiver don’t you?… not forged?

  21. what possibly go wrong here?
    let me I help to find your answer
    when all as said goes sting
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMOGaugKpzs&feature=related
    and when police and other under cover
    are watching you in any step you move and breath
    they think all criminal and all people are belong to them
    and they will find them guilty
    too much policing too much crown attorney and too much JOP
    they are watching you
    lol

  22. robins111- I can’t speak on the quality of Norc firearms, I’ve heard some very positive comments from a well known gunsmith. Where I have a problem with Norc, is the fact they sell weapons to terrorists and criminals. I suppose the same can be said of many manufacturers, but Norc was caught red-handed, and totally banned from the US market. Perhaps I’m being naive when it comes to arms dealers, but I tend to avoid Norc products, even though it costs me a few bucks extra.

  23. Back pre c-68 I had a chinese made 5.56 mm AK knock off. It was a piece of junk. I also had a chinese SKS, which was a really nice piece of kit, so being chinese doesn’t always have to mean junk. I was at my friendly neighbourhood gun store recently and they had a Springfield Armory M1a national match for sale that I was told was not new, but unfired. They wanted 2700 and change for it. They had a chinese knock off for 499. I don’t know how good the chinese one is but for 1/6th the price I might be prepared to give it a shot, so to speak.

  25. Dear ‘ok’,
    Welcome to Canada. Is it too much to ask that you ensure the first letter of every sentence is a capital and that you end every sentence with a period?!?
    Seriously.

  26. Chinese have had a history of bizarre manufacturing decisions weapon wise.
    In the 1930, widespread adaoption and production of the obviously obsolete Mauser M96 pistol….which involved a lot of machining….
    One of the surpises for UN forces in Korea was the Chinese standard knock-off Thompsons(lots of machining), when Soviet PPSh rippers were not only available but much, much easier to manufacture.
    This explains the Chinese preference for the SKS versus the Kalisnikov family. AK’s are not impressive quality wise…it’s a feature….with the exception of the East German versions which dogedly retained the original machined rather than stamped receivers….
    Chinese knock-offs of US firearms do not balk at the machining neccessary.

  27. This Complaint is hollow, we (US) have sold perfectly good equipment as JUNK and the Chinese have stripped it…..The US Manufactures want customers to buy the NEW version and don’t stock the old components or manufacture them. They consider the parts obsolete.. They did it to themselves
    I have a winter hobby buying/fixing/selling Tektronix Oscilloscopes (Demil) from US Gov’t surplus..300-400MHZ Analog scopes that are still the BEST ever made. I can “only” buy parts from the odd American/Canadian, and Greece & China. The parts I get are mostly unused that are perfectly good…CRT are used but easy to test & they are priced right.. China does have bad actors but they are easy to spot.
    I have satisfied customers in REAL physics LABS across the Country (Mass, CAL) that want real-time wide bandwidth Scopes that Work
    The Military & the Manufactures are running a obsolete game where the systems & components are perfectly good and recyclable

  29. Good ole Bill Clinton (D)! I seem to recall rumours of his election campaign getting (forbidden) overseas donations from a certain country as well!
    Posted by: steve at April 5, 2012 9:54 AM ”
    there ya go steve, and dubya takes the entire blame for 2000-2008 when he was @ the whitehouse.
    or was it the golf course…..

  30. “The senate committee said China should “act promptly” and clamp down on its flourishing electronics black market.”
    There. That ought to put an end to it, right?

  31. Posted by: pilgrim at April 5, 2012 12:29 PM
    You can rest assured because no, they can’t. The fake parts would be small discrete chips or components which are much too small to hide RF circuitry.
    The components would be, like someone posted earlier, 100% identical to their legit counterparts with the possible exception of quality control.
    Source: I’m an EE who has bought many components from shady Chinese dealers myself.

  32. Selling mutton as lamb. Isn’t that a subset of the world’s oldest profession?
    Lots of contracts can get so delayed by various screw ups that by the time
    the brand new stuff finally gets installed, half the ICs needed for spares
    stock are no longer made.

  34. You’re right, my bad. I should have been more clear when I said “hide.” It is possible to “hack” a chip in this way, but if someone with the resources of the US military is actively looking for something of the sort, they WILL find one eventually (if they exist).
    I stand by my opinion that all this “kill switch” talk is ridiculous fear mongering. The quality control concerns are pretty legitimate though.
    I could go into how ridiculous it is for the Chinese government to risk a serious international incident by trying to gain an advantage in a war that doesn’t exist, but I digress.

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