Video: Palestine Action stops F-35 production for up to 18 months with supply chain attack on Teledyne

On Oct 2, pro-Palestine resistance fighters in Britain got onto the roof of a factory where Teledyne makes F-35 parts. These parts like many electronics must be made under clean room conditions, a single lint fiber can destroy them. Palestine Action managed to locate the clean room, then wreck it from above, cutting open the roof and allowing dust and debris to enter.

British cops have estimated it may take up to 18 months to recover, and during that interval F-35 fighter-bombers cannot be built once any existing stocks of Teledyne parts are consumed. For the next year and a half, Lockheed-Martin can no more build F-35's without these parts than I could build rubber powered model aircraft without access to rubber bands or radio controlled ones with no access to some key circuit board. This comes not long after Lockheed-Martin recovered from the last disruption to F-35 production.

THIS is direct action, real strategic action to destroy an enemy's ability to fight. Israel uses the F-35 to bomb Gaza, now more F-35s cannot be built. Same basic idea as the US Air Force itself bombing German ball bearing plants in WWII, figuring it's hard to build Nazi panzers without access to ball bearings.

UPDATE: It appears the F-35's were not the only fighter-bombers Israel lost. Some F-15's were blown up too.

@LukefromDC @BillySmith That doesn’t seem logical that a factory with a clean room would have such a flimsy roof. My front porch has more reinforcement and the same fiberglass wavy panels. Something isn’t quite right.

@Catawu @LukefromDC

It doesn't surprise me. :D

I've seen equally business-critical systems left more precarious due to penny-pinching decisions. 🤦‍♂️ :D

@BillySmith @LukefromDC That’s just stunningly unbelievable. I think if true, it exposes the dangerous lack of security and safety

@Catawu @LukefromDC

Most of the time when i see this pattern, it's because the people who actually understood what was going on, have left the organisation, and been replaced by people who are making decisions based on short-term costs, and not on long-term plans.

This situation is no different to what happened with Boeing.

@BillySmith @LukefromDC It’s just scary as hell to contemplate. It is also because govt doesn’t do inspections of any sort any more. We let the companies rate themselves.

@Catawu @LukefromDC

Also, remember the semi-conductor shortages a couple of years ago, that were caused by all of the semi-conductor factories globally, all buying one of their main ingredients from the one factory on the planet making the material.

The company used to run two plants, but Covid cut that down to one factory, just down the road from Fukushima... 🤦‍♂️

Look at the quartz suppliers from the mid-West USA...