Armor plates for U.S. military vehicles produced in Russian-owned plant never passed inspection: Report
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Employees at a Russian-owned steel plant operator in Oregon falsified inspection results on armored plating, including some used for U.S. Army vehicles, according to a new report.
An internal investigation, whose results were obtained by Bloomberg, detailed how workers at the steel plant operator Evraz North America bypassed mandatory hardness tests and inserted fake results for about 12,800 armor plates during incidents spanning from 2017 through 2019 at a facility in Portland. The plates were then labeled as tested and approved.
Evraz launched its internal probe following allegations of bypassed requirements in the quality control procedures, .
The Independent has reached out to Evraz for comment.
Oshkosh Defense, a “primary customer” of the plates, according to Bloomberg, has been awarded contracts by the U.S. Army for Joint Light Tactical Vehicles. The United Kingdom, Israel, Romania and other countries also use the vehicles.
Oshkosh has built more than 22,000 of the vehicles as of 2024, and each are supposed to last about 20 years, according to Bloomberg. The Joint Light Tactical Vehicle has “consistently demonstrated its ability to fill critical capability gaps for U.S. and international militaries,” Oshkosh Defense’s website states.
Evraz’s 2019 internal findings found that beginning in November 2017, some employees failed to consistently use a machine to measure the hardness of the armored plates, circumventing a requirement, and then inputted fake results manually, Bloomberg reported.
“Armor plate does require 100% hardness testing,” the internal report noted. Still, falsifying data was a “widespread” practice, the company investigation concluded.
Four employees admitted to falsifying hardness ratings; some even said there wasn’t enough time to complete the test for each plate due to the demands to keep the process moving, Bloomberg reported.
“That’s how I was trained,” one employee said in the report. Even though his supervisors denied knowing he was doing this, the report determined it was “highly likely” that they all “were aware of the practice.”
One manager admitted that he understood false data was sometimes recorded. “When you’re thrown in the fire, you gotta do what you gotta do to keep the line rolling,” he was quoted in the internal report.
It’s not immediately clear how many Joint Light Tactical Vehicles were equipped with untested plates. The Independent has contacted the U.S. Army for more information.
An Evraz official, however, identified the untested plates as part of the Joint Light Tactical Vehicles program, as well as bing used on another armored vehicle produced by Oshkosh, Bloomberg reported.
The steel operator stopped deliveries of armored plating for the Joint Light Tactical Vehicles program once management was made aware of the situation, according to Bloomberg.
Evraz told Bloomberg that the company follows “strict compliance with all industry standards,” adding that its armored plates passed “independent testing by a government approved facility.” The steel operator said it has not received complaints from customers about its products.
The alleged problems at the facility arose two years after the U.S. Army awarded Oshkosh a $6.7 billion contract to procure nearly 17,000 vehicles for the Army and the Marines. It’s not immediately clear if Oshkosh was aware of the falsified data or of the internal report. Evraz says Oshkosh was aware of its findings. The Independent has reached out to Oshkosh Defense for comment.
Law enforcement is now investigating the falsified tests, Bloomberg reported. FBI agents were visiting several of the steel operator’s facilities, Fox 21 noted last July. Evraz said it was fully cooperating with the agency’s requests.
Evraz North America is a subsidiary of Evraz Plc. No evidence obtained by Bloomberg suggested that the skipped tests, false data or Evraz’s Russian ownership were related to the U.S. efforts to fight Russia in its war against Ukraine.
