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Comment by zapdrive | Hacker News Reader

How hard is it to manufacture an airplane brake? Surely Russia does have the required precision machining equipment and expertise. Of course a lot of that is being devoted to mass manufacture of weapons and other military equipment. I'm sure they can (and maybe in due time, they will) reroute some of those resources towards airplane parts.

In my opinion, Russia is sometimes a little slow to react, but once the shit hits the ceiling (aka things come to the attention of the top leadership) they fix their shit up pretty quickly.

Edit: don't wanna say it, but it DOES sound like Western propaganda. Unless I see planes falling out of the sky in Russia, I will not believe this is a big issue for Russia.

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Of course they have the skills and equipment to make airplane brakes. But think it through a bit. First the airline has to see that they need brakes. Then they have to find a potential supplier, likely an outfit that's already making brakes for Russian airplanes. Now that supplier has to reverse engineer the brakes on the Boeing/Airbus airplanes since they need to be compatible with everything that interfaces to them. That in itself is a substantial task. Now they have to find suitable materials, assuming there aren't proprietary metallurgies or materials in the American brakes.

After that engineering is done, they have to set up a supply chain, a manufacturing line, a quality control system, installation instructions (if they're copying something this may not be needed), and an ordering system. By this point, we'd be well into the millions of dollars if this was done in the US.

And all of this has to be financially worthwhile over some time horizon, unless the airline is also going to foot the upfront cost of all this. And bear in mind that resources dedicated to this may have to be taken away from parts they're already building and making money on.

So with all that, how likely is it to happen? I don't know but it's an interesting question.

You seem to be assuming they will manufacture new brakes from scratch, but what about remanufacturing them (e.g. take a worn out part, replace only the specific components that are worn, then put it back into service)?

I'm sure they would do it using the most efficient methods available. That will reduce the overall cost, but not the concept I laid out. You'll still need all those steps at a minimum. The bottom line is that it's not a trivial "why don't they just..."

Oh, I agree it's not trivial, though with Russia it at least seems doable. They already have an established advanced aerospace industry, so they're already most of the way there. It's not like they're going to have to start from scratch.

One other thing:

>>> And all of this has to be financially worthwhile over some time horizon, unless the airline is also going to foot the upfront cost of all this. And bear in mind that resources dedicated to this may have to be taken away from parts they're already building and making money on.

I think you're neglecting politics. My understanding is Putin is trying to maintain as much of a "business as usual" atmosphere in Russia as possible, and that probably means Russian airlines (which I believe are state-owned) will have a strong incentive to do what they can to keep flying (on top of the pressures of the existential business risk of being unable to continue operations). The main complicating factor that I see isn't a financial calculation, but competition with military production priorities.

Also, I found an article (https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-airline-aeroflot-sen...) that says Russia is starting to send Western planes to Iran for maintenance, since Iran has been manufacturing its own parts for the planes, due to its own sanctions.

The general problem is that Russia has a lot of these issues + war going on + missing workforce due to conscription and emigration.

They can fix any of these problems, but not all of them. The war effort will likely get a priority.

Yes, Tsar not knowing is definitely the crux of the issue. Once he learns about it, the planes he never files are all gonna be fixed pronto. After all the health and well being of his subjects is demonstrably his top priority.

Yes, it's beyond belief that they can't make the required brake parts in Russia.

If Russia starts having "civilian aircraft incidents" due to NATO missiles, there will be also a convenient "well established precedent" that the Russian airplanes are falling out of the air anyways.

That perception of airplane safety may be (is) more relevant than the hard facts.

Failure to maintain brakes isn't going to make airplanes fall out of the sky.

May increase incidents on the ground, though.

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