Nobody Asked Me…

There is keeping secrets and then there is KEEPING secrets…

And it looks like the Air Farce went just a ‘bit’ over the top with the B-2!

Mark Thompson, a national-security analyst at the Project On Government Oversight, brought our attention to the notice, which seeks an engineering effort that will reverse engineer key parts for the B‐2’s Load Heat Exchangers. While it is not exactly clear what part of the aircraft’s many complex and exotic subsystems these heat exchangers relate to, the bomber has no shortage of avionics systems, for example, which could require cooling. 

Sigh… Full article, HERE.

I mean it’s one thing for the military to not have parts because the aircraft is old/at the end of service life, but…

I can’t help but wonder what ‘else’ they don’t have parts for.

And this one is from 2012, from Canada. Military C-130s with counterfeit instruments in some panels in the cockpit…

Despite repeated government denials, CBC News has confirmed that some of Canada’s new Hercules military transport planes have counterfeit Chinese parts in their cockpits that could leave pilots with blank instrument panels in mid-flight.

Documents show the Canadian military has known about the bogus electronic chips in the giant Hercules C-130J aircraft since at least July 2012, but continued to hide the fact during a CBC News investigation months later.

Full article, HERE from the Canadian Broadcast Corp.

We’ve known for a while about the counterfeit replacement parts that are flooding the aircraft industry, most from China…

According to an FAA estimate, about 520,000 counterfeit or unapproved parts are currently making it into planes annually, which is about 2% of the overall 26 million active parts. While 2% may seem like a small number, consider that a typical passenger aircraft contains up to 6 million parts, and consider the extreme tolerances for failure to which each part must adhere.

Full article, HERE.