Honeywell gets hit with $13M fine for defense export violations
defensenews.com
defensenews.com
* Honeywell voluntarily reported their violations.
I was an ITAR Empowered Official. What they did was bad, especially in light of the fact that at least one other time they got nailed for something I would consider a willful violation, but this isn't on the order of disclosing the manufacturing secrets behind a turbine blade or the composition of various coatings on the F-35.
That $5M likely goes into web-based training hell for all their employees, where they spend a few hours clicking through a refresher on ITAR and various export control acts.
Being in physical possession of a turbine blade doesn’t give you the secrets of how to manufacture it, which are extremely tightly controlled.
Look into the Soviet konkordski tire counter-intel effort. If I recall correctly, NATO found out the Soviets were trying to get their hands on the rubber formulation for the tires of the landing gear, and counterintelligence worked with manufacturers to leak the formula for the "worst rubber for the job ever". Keep trying to find where I stumbled on that, but it seems to be lost to the all seeing eye of the Internet now. Closest I get is references to Pavlov smuggling the plans for the landing gear assembly out of France.
Give me two copies of something that you don't want to tell me how to make, one for destructive analysis, and one to compare against as a finished product, and I can at least filter out some false starts from the get-go.
Turbine blades are like ICs in the sense that the secret sauce is in the materials and the manufacturing processes. You can imitate the exterior shape perfectly and it still be completely useless.
cmmc is not in effect, v1.02 is like 2 months old, and v2 is rumored to come out in a month or two.
nist 800-171, which is where the majority of cmmc comes from, didnt even require formal external attestation until like 6 months ago when dfars 252.204-7019 required posting in SPRS to continue doing business with the DoD.
ive never seen, nor heard of, anything actually marked as CUI.
That’s because CUI is a recent label. Per DoDI 5200.48, effective March 6, 2020, CUI is is replacing legacy labels such as For Official Use Only (FOUO), Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU), and Law Enforcement Sensitive (LES). [0]
It's been around for more than 10 years. See CFR 2018 Title 32 Vol 6 Part 2002 (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2018-title32-vol6/pd...) if you want details. DoD implementation ramped up about a year ago.
You might have seen documents marked 'Controlled' in the past.
800-171 has been required since 2017.
Edited to add link to DoD CUI Training https://www.dodcui.mil/Portals/109/Documents/Training%20Docs...
I actually received documents marked CUI last week.
I do not like perception management, and for the definition of a set of public services, the Federal government sure does seem to do a hell of a lot of it. Nat Sec be damned, it isn't a blank check.
Furthermore, once you start doing things like creating mew classifications to ease up the logistics of getting people who can actually work with it, that sure sounds like you're abusing classification (using the word in the "bucketing info for special treatment" sense) far beyond the realm of what you should be.
Nevermind that it makes questions about the current state of DoD classification minutiae the best Fed bait on the planet.
And in return should you be able to get the name and contact information of the confidential informant in your case? All the witnesses against you and their CLEOC reports? Vehicle registrations, license plates, home phone numbers, home addresses?
I think your position is untenable.
If you don't think this is the kind of information that "Law Enforcement Sensitive" applies to, you are incorrect. If you do think this information should be released unfettered to the public, you should justify that position.
Well maybe they know so much about our F35 design... they choose not to build them ;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunde...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor
Edit:
Since I am being downvoted here are some facts on the universally acknowledged disastrous F-35:
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/320295-the-us-air-force-...
https://www.businessinsider.in/defense/hardware/how-the-f-35...
https://acqnotes.com/news/bigest-acquisition-disaster-histor...
https://eurasiantimes.com/inside-americas-trillion-dollar-di...
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and here on the excellence of the Warthog:
https://www.wired.com/2014/12/a10-warthog-isis/
and the excellence of the F-22 Raptor:
https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-tactical/why-f-22-neve...
Over the years as I have read about the F-35 and its, uh, challenges, I've wondered if it's a revenge project. ;)
It might very well be but it does not mean that it does not have some technologies / components that are highly advanced. The participants would like to keep those strictly to themselves.
The brass seem to think that the F-35 is too expensive to fly to maintain right now.
The 14 reguired a higher degree of maintenance due to the consequences of the swing-wing mechanism, but that mechanism also enabled uncompromised performance in both flight regimes it was desired to be performant in. It didn't pretend that you could make a machine that can be a VSTOL, and a carrier aircraft at the same time. The radar systems were superb. The electronics were lackluster. I'm aware of issues with the quality of fire indicator lights though.
The 15 I hear surprisingly little complaint about actually. It just kinda is, and is given endless shit because it can't land or take-off from a boat.
This is certainly not true. If anything, the Chinese are very successfully copying current generation American designs.
Look at those round vector controlled engines. It is Russian 4th (mostly 4+ as of today) gen engines. That is the reason Russia hasn't so far been able to build an F-22 competitor - for PAK-FA, out of the 3 key component of the 5th gen, they built body, not bad of a radar, yet they haven't been able to build a 5th gen engine as of today. China has as of today almost been able to replicate that 4th+ gen engine, yet still very far from the 5th gen.
Even more - Russia has actually officially given up on building the 5th gen. They decided to go straight to the 6th gen which is supposedly all about AI/networking/sensors/drones/etc. with engines playing only secondary role. Not that they have much hopes to succeed at the 6th gen game too, it is just recognition of reality that the 5th gen F-22 level engine isn't happening in the near future and thus they need a plan B. In some sense that leaves China totally on their own when it comes to the 5th gen, and that means like at least 10 years from the current state, and by that time the air will be dominated by the AI/drones/etc. In that sense AI engineers going to work in China may be more strategically important than the Honeywell drawings :) As an example - the current drone powerhouse dominating the region - Turkey - got their drones built by a returned MIT graduate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sel%C3%A7uk_Bayraktar .
Accordingly to online sources they are actually testing second stage 5+ gen engine for SU-57 and are hoping to deploy it sometime in 2022. Will they succeed is a different question of course.
https://eurasiantimes.com/russian-su-57-fighter-soars-high-i...
"The Russian military will be supplied with 76 jets by 2028, 22 of which will be operational by 2024."
Even if they deliver on those estimates, i think the skies will be different in 2030-ties (imagine the thousands of Starlink like satellites managing the army of drones - each drone is easy to shoot down, yet no human carrying plane can defend itself from a large group of drones simultaneously firing beyond-visual-range missiles) Anyway, i don't believe those estimates for a lot of reasons. In particular most of the Russian new military hardware - i mean generationally new, not just modernizations - that has been shown and planned for deliveries starting in the last decade hasn't yet materialized, with the money being one of the key reasons. Another is that Russia is still not going to be able to project power anywhere beside its own vicinity, and thus will be focusing on protecting its shores which, given limited financial resources, favors as the first priority ground based advanced anti-aircraft defense and MiG-31 style approach (ie. like SU-35 with advanced radar and missiles instead of going all the way with Su-57).
The Su-57 would like to have some words with you. Granted it is a bit late to the party..
Where they lag behind isn't range or power, but (maybe for the J20) in stealth.
no. The Russian and Chinese planes with those engines can't supercruise. Thus they either use afterburner - short range - or go slow.
>, but (maybe for the J20) in stealth.
exactly - the engine for stealth plane needs to be stealth itself. That means a bunch of technical solutions and limitations (like hiding the turbine from the radars looking from behind the plane, lowering IR signature, etc.) which complicates the engine construction and may clash with for example the power requirements to supercruise.
The WS-10C engines for the J20 are of equal power to the F119 engines of the F22. They cannot supercruise indeed, yes, but neither can the F35. The J20 is however larger and less aerodynamic and the engine probably has different trans-sonic characteristics and thus cannot supercruise despite being as powerful as the F22.
>exactly - the engine for stealth plane needs to be stealth itself. That means a bunch of technical solutions and limitations (like hiding the turbine from the radars looking from behind the plane, lowering IR signature, etc.) which complicates the engine construction and may clash with for example the power requirements to supercruise.
There is no rear-aspect stealth for any aircraft. The F22 has a 20-25dB higher RCS from the rear than the front, enough to make it plainly detectable. The same will be for any airplane, including the J20 that seems to have a similar drop in RCS from the rear. As for IR signature, this is simply not known. Modern IR sensors can already detect heat emissions from air friction, and lock onto planes even with their engines fully turned off.
F35 is able to supercruise at 1.2 M. The issue is that its stealth coating gets damaged.
>There is no rear-aspect stealth for any aircraft. The F22 has a 20-25dB higher RCS from the rear than the front, enough to make it plainly detectable. The same will be for any airplane
Not the same for any. While the rear aspect situation is naturally worse, it is still very different for "normal" vs. stealth airplanes - i.e. distances at which it can be detected and how well a missile can lock are still significantly decreased by stealth measures like those for F22 and F35 for example :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_F135#Design
"Like the F119, the F135 has a stealthy augmentor where traditional spray bars and flameholders are replaced by thick curved vanes coated with ceramic radar-absorbent materials (RAM). Afterburner fuel injectors are integrated into these vanes, which block line-of-sight of the turbines, contributing to aft-sector stealth. "
As for the F35 supercruise, this is simply wrong. The engine overheats without the afterburner at supersonic speeds and thus supercruise cannot be done for more than a few seconds. Afterburners must be used, but the afterburners in turn damage the RAM.
The RAM in the F35 is not actually destroyed by air friction. It's destroyed by the afterburners : https://www.defenseworld.net/news/26992/Swiss_Internal_Repor...
From this one concluded that the F35 cannot sustain Mach 1.2 without using afterburners.
This is actually even worse than not being able to supercruise - it cannot sustain supersonic flight, full stop.
What China is/was struggling with is the actual know-how of how to make the engines. But by all measures they've almost caught up already.
The most powerful, highest range stealth plane in existance is already Chinese.
The biggest factors in aircraft range and kinematic performance nowadays is doctrine. The US decided vertical landing is more important than range in performance.
That being said, it might surprise you to learn the J20 is more powerful than the F22 with a slightly longer range and an almost identical dry weight.
All of the F35 variants are hampered by the necessity for vertical takeoff. Commonality between the three planes is incredibly high and tradeoffs crossfeed.
The F-22 can supercruise (without afterburners) above Mach 2, and has nearly all the same avionics package as the F-35. Both the F-22 and F-35 have thrust vectoring, and the most advanced stealth coatings, materials, and shaped airframes. If we compare just the F-22 and the J-20, the F-22 has a better TWR, can out-climb, out-run and out-maneuver the J-20, and has a larger payload capacity. The J-20 seems to indeed have better ferry and combat range, however US strategy does not require the same range due to air bases being present around the world and possesses advanced aerial refueling capability - making static range a moot point. I also highly doubt the J-20 matches the F-22 or F-35 in avionics.
The F-22 production line was discontinued nearly entirely because - at the time - the DOD, and more importantly Congress, believed the F-35 would be cheaper and replace most of it's disparate fighter/attacker aircraft (which turned out to be far from the truth, unfortunately). However, the US operates nearly 200 of these fighters and plans to maintain them for decades.
> All of the F35 variants are hampered by the necessity for vertical takeoff. Commonality between the three planes is incredibly high and tradeoffs crossfeed.
This is sort of true, but not entirely. If you look at the three F-35 variants, they are pretty much three different airframes at this point, only really sharing avionics and the shape of the aircraft. It was indeed foolish to think you could build a one-size-fits-all multi-role fighter/attacker to replace purpose-built aircraft like the A-10, F-15, F/A-18 and F-22... but that doesn't make the F-35 a complete turkey.
If you compare a fully loaded J20 to a fully loaded F-22, then yes the F22 has a higher TWR. That's because the J20 carries more fuel, payload capacity of the J20 is however not known but assumed to be larger due to the larger and heavier Chinese missiles it carries in similar numbers.
However at the same loading the J20 has higher thrust than the F22, both with and without afterburners.
The J20 probably cannot supercruise yet, correct.
I haven't said the F35 is a turkey. Just that the US decided that other matters are more important than thrust and range for the F35. It may very well have been a correct decision.
As far as maneuverability of the J20 nothing is known. As J20s with thrust vectoring engines were installed and with the presence of canards, it may well be a highly maneuverable engine, or it might not be. None of us have hard data on this.
In a conflict with a peer power, the US will need range just as much if not moreso than China - outside of aircraft carriers - as all relevant US airbases are vulnerable to being struck and disabled, and the F22 requires advanced bases to operate correctly.
Pure thrust isn't really what is required to win an air-to-air battle. The US found that out with the F-4 in Vietnam (still one of the fastest fighters ever built). Straight line speed is mostly irrelevant today - being hard to see and target is far more important, followed by launch detection, maneuverability and countermeasures (the latter two of which only matter if you can detect a missile launch in time).
Air battles today will be fought well outside line-of-sight - and it's unquestionable the US has more advanced air-to-air missiles at this point in time.
That said, the J-20 might have more thrust, but it's heavier, larger, and has less capable armaments. The Chinese are not known to possess advanced aerial refueling capabilities either, which is why they have to incorporate more fuel capacity and range into their designs.
None of this takes into consideration that F-22's and F-35's do not operate alone in theater. The US also possesses advanced AWACS capabilities, which can spot and designate targets for fighters from hundreds of miles away from the AO.
> I haven't said the F35 is a turkey. Just that the US decided that other matters are more important than thrust and range for the F35. It may very well have been a correct decision.
I think the US is learning an expensive lesson, and will have to expedite it's Gen5+ or Gen6 aircraft programs to compensate for the very expensive and hobbled F-35's that are being produced today. The F-35 program tried to achieve the impossible, and failed. It's not a horrible aircraft, it just isn't a good enough replacement for all the roles it's trying to fill...
Today, the US has unparalleled experience in operating modern warplanes - lessons that have mostly been applied to Gen5 fighters like the F-22 and F-35 - lessons other nations have to borrow or steal to compete. I feel it's very unlikely either the latest Gen5 Russian or Chinese aircraft can really compete toe-to-toe with a wing of F-22's complemented by F-35's and E-3 Sentry's.
As an aside, Wikipedia and other online sources only list US aircraft's unclassified capabilities. True capabilities will far exceed what is publicly released in nearly all cases - meaning the data provided should be considered a low-bound for capabilities.
Debating the overall abilities of each airplane in the scope of their doctrine and battlespace is probably out of scope for an HN comment and involves much more than the aircraft themselves. All I'm gonna say is that in the context of the engagements the J20 is meant to fight it in it has a few aces up its sleeves that the US cannot match in large part due to differences in doctrine.
But they all share the same airframe hobbled with the tradeoffs for VTOL. The F-35 is a great example of trying to do a good job at everything instead of focusing on one thing and being great at it. The end result is it ends up being uncompetitive.
Ironically making a super expensive super complex weapon was a mistake the Germans made in WWII with their tanks. The Tiger tanks cost over $200000 each and took forever to build. They were plagued with reliability problems. The American Sherman tanks cost about $20000 and were mass produced. The Tiger was terrifying and easily won, even outnumbered, but the ability to deploy the Sherman quickly with enough numbers was far more effective. So I find it ironic that the US basically forgot their own lesson there with the F-35.
Source?
From Wikipeia again the F119 engine of the F22 can deliver a maximum of 35 000lb of thrust.
Thrust figures for the WS-10C are harder to come by however. I had found a source giving a figure of 167kN but I don't believe this source is accurate upon further review. We can thus settle on a current figure of 35 000lb = 155kN for the older WS-10G, with the J20 now being only equal to the F22 for lack of a better source on the most recent engines. The source for this figure is Deagel.
Much more powerful engines for the J20 are under development (180kN = 40 500lbf) but they are not reliable enough for fielding yet.
So as of yet the J20 is most powerful ex aequo with the F22 but has a longer range.
To note however, thrust is probably not a very important factor in the era of beyond visual range fights.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-itt-fine-justice-idUSWAT0...
A few things that need to be taken in context here.
- The materials in question were sent to China, Taiwan, Canada and Ireland.
- As others have mentioned, Honeywell sent commercially-available schematics to the above countries, not classified information. The article mentions that Honeywell sent parts relating to the engine, this could literally just be a valve or bearing component. I doubt this kind of information is usable unless you have a ton of additional documentation describing their function and utility as a sub-assembly.
- Honeywell reported this themselves. A bunch of articles on this topic use the phrase 'Honeywell admits...' as if this was some kind of smoking gun.
The knee-jerk reaction claiming that Honeywell has committed treason or something like it is unreasonable. Methinks incompetence from the sales department is to blame here rather than malice.
See Reddit threads discussing same topic:
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/n5vglg/honeywell...
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/n5tcqg/honeywel...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Military/comments/n4gwma/honeywell_...
https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/n5n1jc/honeywell_admi... -
[0] https://globalnews.ca/news/7275588/inside-the-chinese-milita...
[1] https://www.blogto.com/city/2013/01/that_time_toronto_went_s...
Imaginary Property Theft
All that amounts to $13M in fines, $5M of which Honeywell is allowed to spend? Yikes.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/real-life-rogu...
Edit: Here's a really cool video some guys made when they broke into the facility in Kazakhstan where the Burans currently sit, slowly falling apart. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q7ZVXOU3kM
If the engines and electronics are used in commercial applications as well as military then does it matter?
It doesn't take very many steps to make tracking sales untenable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...
>As of 2009, non-military cryptography exports from the U.S. are controlled by the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security. Some restrictions still exist, even for mass market products, particularly with regard to export to "rogue states" and terrorist organizations
That distinction shouldn't need to be made in the first place - it's pretty blindingly obvious to anyone with basic thinking skills that "the government of a county" and "the people/nationalities/culture of a county" are two totally different things.
Even American county dwellers, who tend to be less educated, can understand this pretty easily - most of them identify as being "Americans", but are still critical of their government (and associated politicians).
The CCP has invested a lot of energy into making the people of China conflate these two concepts. The party IS China and the two are inseparable according to the CCP.
This is where the topic becomes contentious and not so black and white. The CCP has successfully influenced millions of people into doing its bidding abroad. And the CCP is fully aware of the West's strong aversion to racism in any form, and has been able to weaponise it.
Relevant reading: Silent Invasion: China's influence in Australia (2018)
The issue is called out-group homogeneity bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity
As an American of Chinese descent, I honestly have very real concerns about my own safety in the next decade or two going forward. Japanese internment camps happened not too long ago, they can happen again. Or worse.
Even if it weren't government sanctioned, violence against us is still on the rise[1].
What's wrong with someone openly having opinions different from yours? If they were really a threat to the US, then they would remain as inconspicuous as possible.
How does it surprise people these days?
China had 20 years of relatively good relationships with US, and the world's biggest spy service.
Take a look at Russia, a supposed ally of Beijing. Annually, there are dozens, and dozens of people who are given life for espionage for China. And those are only cases which go public.
Russia is a closed, militarist society, with secret police sticking its nose into everything.
USA is an open country, with open borders, immigration system, freedom to do whatever business you want, and an open society, with a few million people strong entrepreneur class exuberant at the opportunity of doing business even with a place like China.
It is rational to believe that there are way more than just a few random communists who got into your biggest companies, and much likely that there been a many decades long concerted infiltration, and recruitment campaign. This is just what those guys do.
For example, a former "student activist" from Maoist Kharagpur is now running one very big Californian Internet company.
https://steve-yegge.medium.com/hurricane-china-how-to-prepar...
(I mean, maybe you're right - but that makes me curious as to who you are that you're more knowledgeable than him about this particular topic)
The US and western liberal democracies just need to keep their shit together for another 29 years. (which, I admit, is easier said than done)
So the USA can dominate the entire planet and most of space with 330 million, but China is dead in the water if they drop to a mere 900 million?
If you look at China's problem from a third world perspective like mine, ALL of their issues get easier with less people.
The only thing the PRC could do right now is force people to reproduce at gunpoint, and they even shot themselves in the foot there with the One Child Policy and now having 30 million more young men than women.
It's going to be scary to see Japan, the PRC, the ROC (Taiwan), etc. lose 1/4 of their populations in the next 30 years. The US is the only developed country with okay demographic projections through 2050, and that's only because of immigration. Not sure where you're from, but if you're in a developing country you'll probably be doing okay in 2050.
But wow this guy is on somw type of high horse. Talking about how a third of americans believe conspiracy theories and want college to be more expensive cause they dont want their kids to be "libtards"
And the part where talks about a kid in the US having a bake sale to pay for his brain surgery being some sort of embarrassment compared to China. Pardon me while I roll my eyes back into my skull. You think 90% of the population of china has access to brain surgery? Give me a fucking break. This is the country that not a generation ago were killing children en masse and forcing abortions to stop their population growth. Its not some utopia where all the sick are healed. The CCP couldn't give a fuck about some poor kid in the country side with a brain tumor. Gimme a fucking break. And to say they've eliminated poverty to a greater degree than the US is absolutely laughable. The fringes of Chinese society are dyed in the wool 3rd world levels of living. Even the living standards in the biggest cities are arguably shittier than poverty in the US. I'd rather be impoverished living on an acre of land in boondock Missouri than living in a 200 sqft apartment in Shanghai.
But yeah, we can't ignore the rise of China. We do so at our peril.
All in all, China has already “risen”. To pretend that China is still 3rd world ghetto of the 90s is to ignore that fact at our own peril
International/military supremacy is a completely different story though.
> Honeywell allegedly used a file-sharing platform to inappropriately transmit engineering prints showing layouts, dimensions and geometries for manufacturing castings and finished parts for multiple aircraft, military electronics and gas turbine engines.
You also will not believe how much US military hardware have major parts made in China.
Written this way it appears as if substantial drawings have been disclosed, while in reality quoting the article (emphasis is mine):
"it exported technical drawings of *parts for* the F-35 fighters and other weapons platforms to China and other foreign countries"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/02/27/r...
Unless you have a lot of knowledge about the technology, you may have issues figuring out if something has subtle flaws. For high performance fighter jets, there are a lot of ways you can make it go bad. Maybe tolerances are off a little, or the materials are too brittle in some conditions, etc. There are all sorts of ways you can make stuff that will fail.
In a race to the bottom, lowest bidder world? I think we're all doomed.
According to Honeywell the technology involved “is commercially available throughout the world. No detailed manufacturing or engineering expertise was shared.”
Defense spending is largely a waste of money.