Northrop Grumman Improperly Tested Equipment Used by U.S. Military

The Justice Department has announced that Northrop Grumman, a $30 billion corporation that specializes in providing products and services in electronics, aerospace and shipbuilding to government and commercial customers worldwide, has agreed to pay the United States $8 million.

This is to resolve allegations that Northrop Grumman failed to properly test items that were sold to the military. These include tubes used by the military in night vision goggles and sniper scopes, two very important of pieces of equipment that give the troops an advantage in night fighting and are being used by soldiers and Marines currently fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Northrop Grumman volunteered the information under the Department of Defense Inspector General's Voluntary Disclosure Program. Under the program, the Department of Defense is bound to perform and investigation and that revealed the management did not do proper reviews of the testing that was done.This not only applied to Northrop Grumman but also their predecessor, Litton Industries. This happened over a two-year period from January 2000 to June 2002 at their testing facility located in Tempe, Arizona. They did not find that the violation caused any safety problems. However, there could very well have been. They are just lucky that the items that were not correctly tested turned out to be ok.

Peter D. Keisler, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department's Civil Division stated that all the contractors who do business with the government should consider this case as a warning that they should be very careful not to take and short cuts when testing equipment made of the military. He also states the importance of using the Voluntary Disclosure Program in the event that any mistakes to occur. By using the program and bringing the errors to the government's attention, they enable the government to being an investigation much faster than if the government found out from other sources, or even worse, if the government found out from a failure of the product that lead to death or injury to the troops.