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The following are the reasons why I think this story is a fabrication by either Congressman Waltz, one of his staff, or someone who mislead them. I am trusting the part of the story that bag of bushings are property of the United States Air Force or were. Since the Air Force bought them that means they are replacement parts used for Aircraft repair or scheduled maintenance, many items on military equipment are replaced on a schedule, others are replaced as they where out or are damaged in an accident.
Those are jet engine parts, that makes them a critical application item. You have to mark them with your cage code which is your company I.D. if the item is too small to mark with stamping, engraving or a laser, it has to be individually put in a plastic back with a label glued on a stapled shut.
250 or so small jet engine bushings in one bag doesn't pass the smell test.
Those are not an off the shelf item anywhere, they are custom made to order. Those are made to DOD small contracts with each contract managed by a Federal Procurement Officer. There is nothing small about all the fine print or instructions in the contracts. Any company that meets the criteria in the contract can bid on the lot and the job always goes to the lowest bidder, the only way a job will repeat is if you are low bidder again.
You have to have all kinds of certifications to do critical application items, most of those don't cost a dime, just a bunch of paperwork to fill out and agree you can be audited at any time. I did have to produce a few sworn notarized statements, like I would only source raw materials from advanced countries that were allies of the United States and all raw materials used are traceable.
If a critical application item fails and causes death and destruction they want to know whose ass to fry and anything else you may have made.
I just grabbed a stack of contracts I completed and noticed some of the certifications I had i wonder if they are still good? if they ever hook up the fiber optic cable I may go fish around. There is a big learning curve to do that work.
I am/was certified under the joint USA/Canadian certification program, that makes me a bad mofo, the Canadian Military trusts me along with the USA. I am also certified to have control over classified technical data with military and space applications. That means I can look at a drawing of a B-52 engine down load it and print it out as long ad it is for my eyes only.
I just looked at some of the solicitations I fulfilled. One of them was 20 pages long where I scored a fat $462.00. That was my niche, small jobs I could complete quickly, often I would spend more time with paperwork, packing and shipping the making the parts. The back page on that contract was scribbled run 1 pack 2, scrap, used, $15. It took 1 hour to make the 3 parts 2 hours packing, shipping, and billing. I used a piece of stock leftover from another job already paid for. Used meant I used tooling paid for by another job that still had life left in it. The $15 was what I paid to ship it. Ok, enough from the memory lane trips doing DOD work. I will talk $640 toilet seats next.
P.S. Another issue that does not pass the smell test, those parts were either shipped by the vendor to either a Defense Distribution Depot, a military base, or in a rare case a Tier 1 aircraft builder, you cannot legally walk out or drive out of any of those locations legally with aircraft parts property of USAF.
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