>It's not really feasible to fake something like a raw metal.
No one is trying to pass aluminum or steel as titanium.
It's pretty straightforward to pass one titanium alloy as another, or claim provenance or material properties it doesn't have. I have two indistinguishable scrap pieces on my desk right now, one Grade 5 and one Grade 2. It's also possible to pass a billet or sheet of alloy with defects or poor quality control, voids, or inclusions. "Titanium" is a broad class of materials that are indistinguishable without exotic tools like XRF guns, or, in this case, a well documented and trusted supply chain.
Alloy substitutions and similar fraud happen all the time. It can even be the same alloy but have issues in post treatment and not meet spec. Here's a case where a NASA supplier was committing this fraud for over 20 years. It included fraudulent documentation, but the material itself was not up to spec:
> It's pretty straightforward to pass one titanium alloy as another,
Sure, but per my actual point: characterizing the wrong alloy as "counterfeit titanium" is misleading, no? If I hand you a nickel when you expected a quarter, did I give you "counterfeit money"? No, I gave you the wrong thing.
Cheating on material provenance is fraud. It's not "counterfeiting", and for a journalist to claim so is misleading spin. A counterfeit is something deliberately constructed in imitation of something else, it's not just a low grade substitute.
No one is trying to pass aluminum or steel as titanium.
It's pretty straightforward to pass one titanium alloy as another, or claim provenance or material properties it doesn't have. I have two indistinguishable scrap pieces on my desk right now, one Grade 5 and one Grade 2. It's also possible to pass a billet or sheet of alloy with defects or poor quality control, voids, or inclusions. "Titanium" is a broad class of materials that are indistinguishable without exotic tools like XRF guns, or, in this case, a well documented and trusted supply chain.
Alloy substitutions and similar fraud happen all the time. It can even be the same alloy but have issues in post treatment and not meet spec. Here's a case where a NASA supplier was committing this fraud for over 20 years. It included fraudulent documentation, but the material itself was not up to spec:
https://www.sciencealert.com/a-supplier-was-delivering-fault...