India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

Fake Chinese electronic parts are being used in American military equipment, a key Senate committee probe has found. The Senate Armed Services Committee revealed that a year-long probe found 1,800 cases of fake parts in US military aircraft, with over 70 percent of an estimated one million suspect parts being traced back to China. The committees blamed the weaknesses in the US supply chain, and China's failure to curb the counterfeit market as reasons for the adulteration. It also said that failure of a key part could pose safety and national security risks and lead to higher costs for the Pentagon. After China , the UK and Canada were found to be the next-largest source countries for fake parts, the BBC reports. The committee criticised China for failing to crack down on counterfeit manufacturers and said the committee staff wanting to travel to China for the investigation had not been granted visas by Beijing . The report said, "Counterfeit electronic parts are sold openly in public markets in China . Rather than acknowledging the problem and moving aggressively to shut down counterfeiters, the Chinese government has tried to avoid scrutiny." The report also said that in some cases the U.S. defence department had reimbursed contractors for the costs they incurred as a result of their failure to spot fake components in their own supply chain, giving companies no incentive to weed out counterfeits themselves.

Counterfeit Chinese parts rampant in US military equipment