[justinclift]

Any idea if they're precision engineered out of something exotic? Maybe machined from single-crystal titanium or something.

Asking because there's a bit of a different between standard consumer grade stuff, and specialist high performance things designed for a specific exotic environment.

[gravescale]

Also each one probably also has its own fully traceable and auditable supply chain, with a record of every step, including who signed off on it, when and where, from the moment it entered the refinery, and the records are guaranteed to be kept available for decades, along with storage and maintenance of the tooling and capacity to make more at short notice indefinitely. Plus the costs of getting the contract sorted and the part specced and signed off on in the first place, amortised across the relatively small initial batch.

Presumably there for political protection as much as anything else: "Bushinggate topples Senator after it's revealed a Russian company supplied the titanium" or "Scandal of the aircraft parts Anerica has forgotten how to make".

[konfusinomicon]

damn that putin! with his gnarled tendril hands all up in big titanium!

[gravescale]

Funnily enough, although the SR-71 was largely made of Soviet titanium, Russia's not a major producer now (Ukraine is now a relatively minor one, perhaps it was from there). But they got out in front of that one post-declassification with the rather fun spin "har har, they thought we wanted it for pizza ovens and we put it in a spy plane to fly over their country, the absolute rubes".

[konfusinomicon]

I think his argument was that the alternative on the free market met FAA standards, which are in his words, the most audited parts in the world, and were a fraction of the cost

[justinclift]

Yeah, that might have been his point.

That being said, as far as I know the FAA standards aren't really military standards.

Doing some quick searching shows this which seems relevant:

https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/12401/how-much-...

So just because something meets a particular level of FAA compliance doesn't really speak to whether they'd work properly on the example "fighter jet" (potentially needing much higher performance).

Sounds like the guy was trying to do a populist pulpit style smoke-and-mirrors kind of thing?

Though if you can follow up and get the details of what type of fighter jet, and what type of bushings he meant (good luck with that! ;>) maybe that guy will turn out to be the first politician in history that's not completely full of crap. :D