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.

Here's a screenshot of the communique posted by Palestine Action for this highly effective and militant direct action.
@LukefromDC there is one reply there that says this is just one of many places that make those parts, is it as effective as they thought?

@david_preston Those EXACT parts? To use something else would require recertifying whatever the parts are used in, possibly whatever that is used in.

Aviation is not like making cars. Anyway, the UK cops seem to deem it effective. If there is another plant, we'll hit that one too

@LukefromDC it was mentioned in the feed you posted that is all. What sort of sentence will they receive for doing it, I suppose it is a criminal damage sorted of charge maybe.
@david_preston NO sentence if they do not get caught.
@LukefromDC but there is a picture of the face of one of them doing it or is that somewhere else?

@david_preston I didn't produce the video and it's all over Twitter. Had I been there in person this would have been faces blurred and electronic voices replacing real ones. Like I said though, we have both a guerilla and a CD side of this movement. Different folks use different rules.

The CD folks are interesting: since prison does NOT deter them, they cannot be stopped if not detected in advance, forensics and counter-forensics sometimes go right out the window.

@LukefromDC ok so they want to get caught to make a point. It's all very interesting objectively speaking that is.
@LukefromDC @david_preston We all know that fiddling with Israel can even get you kidnapped, tortured and murdered, and British government is likely to collaborate with that. These people didn't do it because they didn't expect harsh consequences, they did it because something needs to be done and nobody else is doing it.
Was it effective? Time will tell. But even as symbolic action it's really powerful.
@kAlvaro @LukefromDC Or maybe they showed their faces so that they then were protected when tried for the acts, harder to disappear someone if their face is visible I suppose. I don't suppose it will be easy to evaluate the effectiveness of this act, why 18 months to replace, how much stock do they have, is this the only room they have all the delicate materials. There a lot of unknowns there that would be better for the manufacturers to not verify and not so easy to get factual information.
@david_preston @kAlvaro If Israel ever tries to disappear me the offending Mossad agents will be disappearing with me. I dare them to bring it!
Here is a photo from inside one of Teledyne's clean rooms. Note the ceiling that matches what is shown in Palestine Action's video
@LukefromDC
Wow, that's a real shame... 😆
@LukefromDC Were they already caught or why was there no attempt at anonymity / hiding their identities?

@timthelion That I do not know. Our movement contains both civil disobedience focussed types (this would be similar to a "ploughshares" action if they stuck around) and specialists in guerilla warfare, such as those who have hobbled Cop City in Atlanta's Weelaunee Forest with tens of millions of dollars worth of fire damage.

My personal loyalty is to the guerilla side of the house but we are all on the same side.

@LukefromDC just to be clear. This is terrorism and treason.
@PastAndFuschia No, it's warfare and resistance to genocide. Treason against genocide is DUTY, and international courts have held this to be the case.
@LukefromDC as much as I want a free and sovereign Palestine, as much I despise Netanyahu for his murderous "peace plan"... This successful attack on it's own isn't going to do much. Israel doesn't have a Fighterjet shortage to exploit. The jets are already built. To make a difference, they need to dstroy ammo depots or the Fighterjets, too.

@LukefromDC

This is similar to the actions back in the early 1990's, where by blocking an external outflow by cementing it shut, one group stopped the UK production of nuclear warheads.

Supply-chain attacks work.

@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

I'm in the UK, so i see more of the stupidity from this side of the pond, but this is normal for the UK private sector.

Reliable, Fast, Cheap - Pick One! :D

@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...

@Catawu @BillySmith About 25 years ago, ELF (pro-Earth guerilla) fighters used brand new tents pitched indoors plus full body protective suits to improvise a clean room. They needed to assemble devices with not a single skin cell or hair included for counter-forenstic reasons. These were of course single-use, disposable clean rooms.

Thus we see a clean room can be flimsy yet still a clean room

@LukefromDC @BillySmith I can see it on a short term basis, but this was supposed to be a full time, permanent and the flimsy construction of the site is just mind-boggling.

@Catawu @LukefromDC

Like i said, no surprise from me.

Never underestimate the power of temporary solution that becomes permanently used.

Making the fix comes with costs that will have to appear on someone's budget.

It's very bureaucracy. :D

@BillySmith @LukefromDC Nope. I believe it, I’m just… appalled