Chinese Components - DOD Procurement and MIL-SPEC

ronseto:

Military has their own specification the components have to pass. One thing the government have always done was make sure they are not dependant on one source........ever notice when a contract is issued, there is a primary supplier/contractor and a secondary supplier/contractor.

They (the government) believe in redundancy.........unless that changed.

phoenix911

I realize about specifications and primary/secondary suppliers, but what happens when NO ONE can meet the specs? Is it correct to say gov will accept parts made overseas as long as they satisfy the specs? It is getting more and more difficult to find parts wholly made in U.S.A.

I don't know if you know how contracting with the government works........breifly, because its rather indepth....there are a couple of ways to become a vendor.

1.) you can get I don't know what you call it .....so I'll call it preferential treatment if your a veteran, and own a business, and want to be a supplier, then you take a number of class to learn how to submit bids and interpreted contracts. (this is the easy way)

2.) You do the same as above, but you are more scrutinized basically, and if your a foreign government it worse, but not impossible. Look at the project the air Fir awarded to Europe to build refueling planes instead of Boeing even then a stink was made because Boeing was not competitive.

Once your a vendor, it does become easier, but getting thier is difficult.

phoenix911

I'm only a little bit sorry to say this, but please learn the difference between "your" (means something that belongs to you) and "you're" (a contraction of" you are")!

They are indeed pronounced the same by many people, but the meanings are quite different. I can't help having been a teacher for so long...

Half of the US is using "your" instead of "you are". What have you guys (teachers) been doing within the past 30 years?

Maybe your half is using "your" for "you're", but my half had better not. I still reject drawings for spelling mistakes.

And, not to be pedantic, but "you guys" is grammatically incorrect; the correct term is "yinz".

Obviously not enough!

Do you prefer to be included in the educated half or the ignorant half?

You're is the correct form.

thanks, but don't stop thier.......i mean there, because there's more mispelled words on the post.

there ARE more MISSPELLED words on the post

you are right in raising the issue but who cares when profits and shareholders interest is in focus.

crm

Worse is that there are known Chinese components integrated into most everything the military has in some place or another that are designed to fail either upon command or prematurely.

AH

You sound like a conspiracy theorist.

It's never simple with DOD stuff, but the "almost simple" answer is yes. You want to research DFARS. There are many components no longer made in the US.

GA TVP45.

DFARS covers Metals procurements by citation in the purchasing documents.

It is a pain in that US providers must use US materials; but companies from outside US are free to use materials from a list of approved countries.

Also google "Byrd amendment" "Buy american act"

milo

I think this is what happens when wall street is running the show. Manufacturing will storm back once the US government declares our china debt to be forgiven.

We will then be free to protect our proprietary property. Tariffs that Regan dropped to 2% will be reinstated back to the 25-35%, and our Manufacturing base will grow again.

This is my personal analysis and belief.

Vote with your mind, not with hope or fear. Don't let your emotions rule you.

GA!

emc_c

I work for a company that sells certain USA made product to the military. Basically, we don't relay on them as a customer. We are the only company in the US manufacturing our type of product. It depends on who's running the show, some years we get plenty of contracts, some none, and some mixed.

To be honest I think it boils down to military buyers and their affinity toward perks. As an engineer, I'm not sure what our sales team offers buyers regarding perks but I'm sure we're not as generous as some of our competition. In my opinion these "gifts" are bribery and should be illegal.

GA, but there are way too many "guests". Are we CR4 members afraid to be candid?

I wanted to cower under the cloak of anonymity for this topic.

aahhh, the cloak of invisibility.

This guest wisely used Guest status on this one. it is his company being mentioned in passing...

milo

The DOD realized that they were being taken and instituted COTS (commercial off the shelf) procurement as much as possible about 15 years ago. The metal parts where DFAR are applied by the procuring agency, places some limitations which help USA suppliers but often does not make sense in todays global economy.

Secured military defense articles, service and technical data are regulated by ITAR (international traffic in arms regulations) and EAR (export administration regulations), which does allow strictly approved and controlled procurements outside the USA, but only from countries on the "good guy list" (not China, North Korea, Iran, etc.)

I don't think I have ever seen any thing in writing that said military purchases had to be American. I can remember in the fifties ordering tools in the Navy and receiving what we then referred to as "Jap Junk", the only defense was to order eight of anything that required hardening or any sort of finesse.

I thought that the problem with the Thresher was a lack of reserve buoyancy and inadequate emergency blow system. I don't know how foreign components would have affected that.

It wouldn't surprise me to see Toyota's as government vehicles. Just a matter of time.

Our weapons inventory appears to be first class, from aircraft carriers to jet aircraft to battlefield weapons, at least what is presented on TV by programs on the military channel. If those weapons perform as well as they seem to do, it really doesn't matter what country they came from.

"it really doesn't matter what country they came from."

YES IT DOES! If whatever country(ies) they come from decide(s) to shut off the supply for any reason, we will soon be in deep doodoo, unable to protect ourselves!

We are in a dangerous place in America today. If a worldwide boycott were in place, it would take years to forge ahead on the manufacturing of necessary components to safeguard our country.

This is why we have to kiss butt (extremely low tariffs) while they take advantage of our weakness. (extremely high tariffs)