Battling fraudulent product substitution

Imagine for a minute that you’re an Air Force pilot flying the fighter jet F-16CM Falcon and you’re returning to base after a nighttime training mission. While attempting to touch down on the runway, you discover that your landing gear is damaged. You execute a go-around and try to land again, this time by having the plane’s tailhook catch an arresting cable. That fails too, and the wing touches the runway. As the plane starts to crash, you reach down and pull the ejection handle, which releases the canopy. An explosive cartridge launches your seat over a hundred feet into the air. But your parachute fails to deploy, and you realize you’re about to slam into the ground, still strapped into your seat, with only a fraction of a second to go before your death. How could a scenario like this happen? Once an ejection handle is pulled, it triggers an almost instantaneous sequence of events aimed at getting the pilot safely to the ground. But in this real-life example of the potential dangers of product substitution, an Air Force investigation later revealed that the failure of the seat’s digital recovery sequencer (DRS) — which controls the timing of the ejection — contributed to the pilot’s death. Not only that, but the electronic components inside the sequencer were reportedly counterfeit, even though the F-16 manufacturer maintained the strictest quality controls over its subcontractors that built the ejection seat and the DRS.