Comment by karmelapple

Absolutely. Former avionics company employee here - not only do companies like Collins have COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) products to buy, but they themselves are frequently made of at least some COTS components. So each of those components have been tested and put into production by a company who's laser focused on the safety and reliability of that part.

You only need to spend a little time with a reliability engineer and see some of the calculations they do to start realizing how when even one or two components in a system have little corners cut, how it can drastically impact the overall safety of the system.

With the amount of corners cut on this submarine, I am unfortunately less than surprised at both the failure in the article and the crisis happening to it right now.

I hope all the souls aboard can somehow get home safe, and I hope the people who put them into this seemingly corners-cut vessel do not get to float any more craft, and that they didn't undersell the riskiness of this venture... although I'm unfortunately not optimistic about any of that.