U.S. Media Reports Missing F-35 Parts Worth Billions, "Pentagon Accountability Progress Minimal"

[Global Times Comprehensive Report] The U.S. F-35 stealth fighter program is referred to as "the most expensive weapon program in history." The Government Accountability Office (GAO) warned in an audit report that due to management chaos, billions of dollars' worth of F-35 spare parts are missing and difficult to track. This spare parts management issue directly affects the combat readiness of the U.S. military.

According to U.S. Defense News on November 10, since the GAO and the Pentagon Inspector General first exposed the chaotic management of F-35 spare parts in 2019, "the Pentagon has made little progress in accountability for F-35 spare parts." The report states that the Pentagon's records regarding F-35 spare parts are "outdated, inaccurate, and incomplete." It reports that unlike most aircraft, which are procured and managed by various military branches or countries independently, the F-35 program primarily relies on a "global spare parts pool" shared by the U.S. Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and international customers. These different F-35 users need to procure corresponding spare parts from the "global spare parts pool" based on their fleet size and planned flight hours, with Lockheed Martin responsible for managing the supply chain and distributing them to bases or customers worldwide. The GAO report shows that as of March 2026, the "global spare parts pool" has an inventory of approximately 26 million spare parts valued at $31 billion. However, 17,000 spare parts worth up to $2.5 billion have not been recorded in the Pentagon's logistics management platform. The report criticizes the system for difficulties in tracking the whereabouts of spare parts, insufficient supply chain transparency, and significant losses or unaccounted parts due to mismanagement, with the Pentagon making slow progress in accountability. For example, the GAO report in 2023 explicitly pointed out that between 2018 and 2022, a prime contractor lost over 1 million F-35 spare parts valued at over $85 million. However, as of March 2026, the F-35 Joint Program Office still had not learned the status of these spare parts. Asif Khan, director of the GAO's Financial Management and Assurance team, criticized, "The Department of Defense does not have a complete record of F-35 spare parts, so unless contractors or government facility staff identify and report losses, it is impossible to know when they were lost."

Worse still, it is impossible to confirm whether some F-35 spare parts are actually in their designated locations, partly because prime contractors do not always know the spare parts inventory held by subcontractors, and many of the data submitted to the system contain gaps. The GAO report states that "in the contract data requirements list for December 2025, nearly 6% of the F-35 spare parts procurement costs were below $0.01, indicating potential data errors." At the same time, the official data recording the inventory status and location of the "global spare parts pool" is also unreliable, "not usable for asset accountability or financial reporting," making it difficult to even estimate how many of the 26 million F-35 spare parts are missing.

The chaos in F-35 spare parts management has severely impacted the daily combat readiness of the U.S. military. Another report released by the GAO in June this year revealed that the readiness rate of the F-35 fighter jets continues to decline in fiscal year 2025. The report shows that the basic mission capability rate (the percentage of time the aircraft can perform at least one designated mission) of the F-35 fleet dropped from 67% in fiscal year 2021 to 44% in fiscal year 2025, while the full mission capability rate (the percentage of time the aircraft can perform all designated missions) fell from 38% to 25%. U.S. Air Force officials explicitly attributed this significant decline to issues such as spare parts supply shortages. The F-35 program office also admitted to the GAO that the current support system "cannot fully support the F-35 fleet."

The Pentagon Inspector General's report also disclosed the same predicament. For example, the 125th Fighter Attack Squadron at Naval Air Station Lemoore in California borrowed a total of 89 parts from different F-35C fighter jets during the four-month period from November 2024 to February 2025, solely to "keep the remaining aircraft mission-capable." The report clearly mentioned that the U.S. military's F-35 fleet is borrowing parts to maintain flight operations rather than relying on receiving parts from Lockheed Martin's supply chain. Even U.S. allies are suffering from this issue. The South Korean Air Force's F-35A fleet experienced approximately 420 instances of parts borrowing between 2021 and April 2026. (Xie Zhao)