china missed an excellent opportunity to delay the entire F-35 program, but failed to act!
The issue was rare earth magnets used in the planes' radar and other high-power magnets used to properly position landing gear and the gears' doors.
Under a law passed by our erudite congress, it is illegal to use chinese magnets (and other items) in defense articles.
The head of procurement for the US government issued a waiver,( ie--"you guys don't have to obey this law"), to Honeywell and Northrop Grumman
to avoid more delays in the F-35 program!china could have simply refused to violate US law, and not sold the magnets to those suppliers, and thus delayed even more one of the most delayed and expensive defense acquisitions in US history.
But they blew it! And they should have known better, because as we all know, they "sat in" on design meetings with Lockheed engineers.
The radar evidently contains some $2 magnets that along with the other magnets would cost $10.8 million to remove, and involve 25,000 man-hours of labor. Let's see...That comes out to around $400 per hour to replace these items with what the article describes as "American magnets". But if American magnets were available in the first place.....?
No, there's nothing wrong with our defense acquisition process.
(that rolling eyes one is the emoticon that comes closest to expressing sarcasm)
china, you really blew it!!
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