DUST Identity Targets Counterfeit Aircraft Parts

DUST Identity, a Massachusetts company whose Diamond Unclonable Security Tag (DUST) technology uses diamond particles to authenticate objects, has launched a new platform that it says will help maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) providers identify fraudulent aircraft parts. 

Called Theseus, the platform combines a physical material marking with AI-assisted verification of airworthiness documents, allowing MROs to independently confirm the identity and provenance of incoming aerospace parts. Company CEO Ophir Gaathon announced the platform’s launch today at the Titanium Europe 2026 conference in Toulouse, France.

Supply-chain fraud poses a growing threat, and MRO operators bear the most direct exposure. The FAA estimates that roughly 2% of the 26 million parts installed on aircraft each year may be counterfeit, or more than 500,000 parts annually.

Earlier this year, more than 600 non-airworthy turbofan engine parts were stolen in Spain after criminals impersonated a contracted disposal provider and intercepted a shipment intended for destruction. EASA issued a safety notice on March 26 warning that the stolen components—spanning CFM International’s CFM56, International Aero Engines’ V2500, Pratt & Whitney’s PW1100G, and Rolls-Royce’s RB211 engine families—may now be on the market with falsified documentation. MROs would be the first to encounter those parts if they re-enter the market.

What happened in Spain echoes an earlier and costlier case. In the AOG Technics scandal—which erupted in 2023—a UK court eventually found that thousands of CFM56 parts had been sold with forged EASA Form 1 and FAA 8130-3 certificates over four years. MROs and airlines that installed the suspect parts were forced to ground aircraft and strip engines for inspection at an estimated industry cost of $53 million.

“The industry has spent decades trying to solve this with paperwork,” Gaathon said in a company statement. “But paperwork can be forged, separated from the part it describes, or reused. MROs are left holding the risk at the end of a supply chain they didn’t control.”

The name is a nod to the ancient philosophical puzzle of the Ship of Theseus—the question of whether an object whose original parts have been replaced remains the same object. For aerospace components that are repaired, overhauled, and handed between operators over decades, it is less a thought experiment than a practical daily problem.

How Theseus Works

Theseus has two components: physical markings that are scanned with a handheld optical device, and cloud-based document authentication software that uses artificial intelligence to detect forgeries. 

First, tiny, lab-engineered diamond dust particles are applied directly to titanium billets, nickel alloy forgings, stainless steel bars, and other materials at the point of origin using a polymer epoxy. As the diamond nanoparticles settle and cure in the polymer, their individual positions and orientations create a random pattern that cannot be controlled or reproduced.

According to DUST Identity, there are more than 10^230 possible unique fingerprints their markers can generate—a number so large that the odds of any two markers being identical are effectively zero. To put it in context, the estimated number of atoms in the observable universe is roughly 10^80.

Permanently bonded to the metal, this identifiable marking stays with the part as it moves through the supply chain. “By the time a part reaches an MRO receiving dock, its physical provenance is verifiable on the spot,” according to DUST Identity.

When a billet or other raw stock is cut into multiple parts, each piece receives its own marker at the moment of separation, and that division is recorded in the system, explained DUST Identity chief revenue officer Roy Solomon. “DUST markers are engineered to survive aggressive industrial processes,” Solomon told AIN. “The diamond particles are inert, chemically stable, and embedded in ways that withstand high-heat, high-friction manufacturing environments.”

Document verification is the second piece. Using AI-assisted analysis, Theseus examines 8130-3s, EASA Form 1s, and other airworthiness certificates for signs of fraud—documents that have been reused, data that doesn’t add up, and anomalies in stamps or signatures. Each document is tied to the specific physical part it describes, so legitimate paperwork cannot be matched to a different component.

This type of physical marking traces back to quantum computing research at Columbia University, where co-founders Gaathon, Jonathan Hodges, and Dirk Englund met as students studying the quantum characteristics of diamonds. DUST Identity spun out of MIT in 2018 with early support from DARPA.

Proven in the Field

Marking technology from DUST Identity is already in use on military hardware. In 2022, Parker Aerospace announced it was applying DUST markers to F-35 horizontal tail electro-hydrostatic actuators for Lockheed Martin to track components through their service lives.

Stepping into the commercial sector, DUST Identity recently conducted a pilot program with Airbus. Working with French specialty metals mill Aubert & Duval, distributor PSD Arrow, and machining company Mecachrome, the pilot tracked titanium bar stock from the mill through distribution and machining to delivery at Airbus. At each stage, material identity was scanned and verified, with certificates of conformity and test data attached to the same digital record.

“This pilot wanted to prove that when you give the material itself an identity, you don’t just trace it. You build trust into the supply chain at the physical level,” Sergio Allegri, DUST Identity’s director of sales and business development, said in a video documenting the pilot project. 

MROs don’t need to wait for suppliers to start using Theseus before getting value from the platform, Solomon told AIN. An MRO that begins marking and registering parts during incoming inspection creates a verifiable record from that point forward, regardless of what its upstream suppliers are doing. “Partial adoption is a feature, not a limitation,” Solomon said.

Theseus authenticates parts that carry a DUST marker and are registered in the system, but it was not designed to identify parts that were never enrolled. That means it cannot flag the stolen Spanish components now potentially in circulation. Solomon noted that the absence of a marker on a part that should carry one is itself a signal that the platform surfaces, but only once upstream suppliers are enrolled.

DUST Identity is not alone in trying to solve the parts-provenance problem. In February 2024, Airbus, Boeing, GE Aerospace, and Safran were among the companies that formed the Aviation Supply Chain Integrity Coalition to strengthen parts verification across the industry. Theseus enters a market that is actively looking for solutions; the question is whether physical authentication at the material level can achieve the scale of adoption the problem demands.

The company raised $40 million in a Series B funding round in December 2023, backed by Airbus Ventures and Lockheed Martin Ventures, among others.