Grrrr...
SSDD again...
The U.S. Navy is scavenging for spare parts from grounded materiel in order to address maintenance needs, a new government watchdog report found.
The problem arises from gaps in the Defense Department’s data rights for weapon systems that force Navy maintainers to rely on vendors for parts, which in turn can balloon maintenance timelines.
In the event of these repair delays, the service maintains operational readiness by repurposing parts from its own aircraft and submarines.
Full article HERE from Navy Times.
This is nothing new. We were doing this back in the 80s to keep things up and running. A lot of the blame for this lands squarely on the acquisition process, corrupt as it is, because Joe Average Sailor has NO idea what goes into maintaining parts inventory for their specific ship/sub/aircraft.
That was why we ‘usually’ had a hangar queen that was stuck off in the corner of the hangar that was the rob bird. Anything you needed to get your bird up came off that one.
It was pure hell trying to get the hangar queen flyable again... sigh...
At one point, the Marines were robbing parts off F-18s in museums to keep their F-18Cs flying... sigh
This is just one of MANY things that need to get fixed.
In other news, I’ll be out of pocket for a few days, taking a little vacation, so no posting until next Tuesday. Go read the folks on Substack, or pick up a book and read it!


Thanks for pointing this out, Jim. Pretty relevant to any military supply system, real or fictional.
Enjoy your time away. 👍
we robbed from the dead fleet boats all the time, often for stuff that was no longer made, the manufacturer had gone out of business, often decades ago.