I read the 82 page chapter of the Cox report related to Loral as available at MSNBC
web site. If anyone still has an open mind on the subject, the following may be
interesting.
The Cox report provides a lot of detail, much of it published for the first time, about the
events surrounding the "Independent Review Committee" (IRC) chaired by Loral after
the Long March 3B failure of involving Intelsat 708. Some of it does not reflect credit
on the company's management, which, of course has admitted some mistakes. There are
several instances of bureaucratic lapses, communications failures, inadequate training (in
export control) etc.
However, important mitigating facts are present in this report, although cerainly not
highlighted, including:
1. The IRC included at least one English and one German national in addition to several
other non-Loral employees. Indeed, the English national, John Holt, "drafted the
technical section of the report" (p. 4) He was asigned the "task of writing the major
portion of the report" "because he seemed to have the best understanding of the issues"
(p. 20.) In other words, the IRC report was not based solely or even primarily on "US"
technology.
2. The IRC (and in turn the USG) learned immense amounts about the design and test
philosophy of the LM3B. For example (p.3) "IRC members reviewed the extensive
reports furnished by China Great Wall Industry Corporation (CGWIC) documenting the
PRC launch failure investigation" and "The committee's activities also included tours of
PRC assembly and test facilities for guidance and control equipment." On P. 10:
"CGWIC provided Intelsat and Loral with three volumes of data and eight detailed
reports on the current status of the failure investigation" On P. 14: "participants were
taken on a tour of the Long March rocket assembly area. They were also shown, in a
partially opened state, units described by the PRC as the older Long March 3 inertial
measurement unit." Careful reading of the Cox report makes it clear that the west
learned a lot more about the Chinese technology than vice versa. A further example:
starting on page 36 there is a correlation (prepared by CGWIC) of IRC
recommendations vs CGWIC corrective actions. In every case the IRC
recommendation is generic "motherhood" (e.g. " Improve quality control in
manufacturing") and the CGWIC corrective action is relatively specific and detailed (e.g.
"To strengthen soldering quality check, including pre-soldering raw material detect (sic),
post-soldering non-destructive tension test and sampling destructive test for key parts")
3. The significance of the "assistance" provided by the IRC is in dispute within the USG;
for example: "The interagency review also noted that the LM3B guidance system on
which Loral and Hughes provided advice is not a likely candidate for use in future PRC
intercontinental missiles" (p. 7) and "the CIA reported to the State Department that the
IRC report did not disclose any significant missile-related technology or know-how to
the PRC's ballistic missile program" (p. 31)
4. The report's conclusion (p. 64)
" To the extent that ballistic missile manufacturing processes and practices are similar to
those for rockete, an incremental potential benefit to future PRC ballistic missile
programs could come from increased production efficiency, and improved reliability
through adoption of improved quality control and reliability-enhancing measures in
design and manufacturing that were introduced after the accident investigation, including
some that the Independent Review Committee advocated"
seems pretty underwhelming to me, to put it mildly.
-RS
|
