The Pentagon’s pause in its acceptance of new Lockheed Martin [LMT] F-35 fighters for the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps points to a larger problem–the apparent lack of knowledge by DoD and its contractors of the identities of lower level suppliers.
Lockheed Martin has applied for a national security waiver to resume U.S. F-35 shipments after DoD halted deliveries upon the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) telling the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) on Aug. 19 of a Chinese-made alloy in the aircraft’s turbomachine pumps by Honeywell [HON] (Defense Daily, Sept. 7).
The Aug. 19 notification indicated that the cobalt and samarium alloy “is potentially in non-compliance with Defense Federal Acquisition Regulations Supplement (DFARS), as the alloy was produced in the People’s Republic of China [PRC],” the F-35 JPO said earlier this month.
“On Sep. 2, the F-35 JPO received a formal disclosure about the DFARS non-compliance for the alloy used in the magnets,” the F-35 JPO said. “Further investigation is underway to understand the causal factors for the non-compliance and to establish corrective action.”
The F-35 program has said that the China-made magnet “does not transmit information or harm the integrity of the aircraft and there are no performance, quality, safety, or security risks associated with this issue and flight operations for the F-35 in-service fleet will continue as normal.”
“Defense contractors voluntarily shared information with DCMA and the JPO once the issue was discovered and they have found an alternative source for the alloy that will be used in future turbomachines,” the program has said. “Based on the additional information, the F-35 JPO temporarily paused the acceptance of new F-35 aircraft to ensure the F-35 program’s compliance to DFARS pertaining to specialty metals.”
While the Chinese-made alloy was magnetized in the United States, the future alloy is to be U.S.-made as well.
“Honeywell has stopped work with the supplier providing [the current Chinese] alloy, and an alternative U.S. source is already on order with anticipated delivery next month,” Lockheed Martin said.
The DFARS sections at issue are 10 U.S.C 4863 and DFARS 252.225-7009.
According to an industry timeline, an F-35 3rd tier lube pump supplier for the turbomachine told Honeywell that an F-35 5th tier supplier had been using Chinese-made alloy in their magnets. Honeywell then informed Lockheed Martin last month that the alloy used in the turbomachine magnet came from China.
In May last year, the U.S. State Department said that Honeywell had disclosed a problematic export of technical drawings and agreed to pay a $13 million fine in relation to violations of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR)–some of which involved the export of 71 technical drawings on the F-35 fighter and other weapons systems between July, 2011 and October, 2015 to suppliers and subsidiaries in China.
“The U.S. Government reviewed copies of the 71 drawings and determined that exports to and retransfers in the PRC of drawings for certain parts and components for the engine platforms for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, B-1B Lancer
Long-Range Strategic Bomber, and the F-22 Fighter Aircraft harmed U.S. national security,” the State Department said last year.
A February DoD report on securing defense supply chains in response to President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14017 said that “the average American aerospace company relies on roughly 200 first tier suppliers” and that “the second and third tiers have more than 12,000 companies.”
“For several decades, the DoD has entrusted supply chain visibility and risk management to companies in the private sector that provide it with defense capabilities,” the report said. “Consequently, the DoD has limited visibility into some sub-tiers of defense supply chains and does not track these vulnerabilities as they impact weapons programs. As supply chains have become more global in scale, prime contractors have lost some visibility into the sub-tiers of their supply chains, especially below third-tier levels.”
Since at least 2018, DoD’s industrial policy office has worked on a DIBNow system to identify suppliers.