GAO highlights slipshod nature of F-35 parts management

Government Accountability Office report comes weeks after F-35 parts being transported from Australia to the USA vanished in Hong Kong.
The US government’s audit agency has raised an alarm about the US military’s ability to manage the vast inventory of parts related to the Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter.

The F-35 programme includes about 26 million parts valued at roughly $31 billion held at over 700 contractors and government facilities globally, says the US Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The agency notes that the Department of War – which it refers to by its official name, the Department of Defense (DoD) – has failed to maintain complete records of the parts.

It notes that the whereabouts of $85 million in missing F-35 parts the GAO identified in 2023 are still unknown. The F-35’s Joint Program Office (JPO) also lacks procedures to review losses at government managed facilities.

The report does not speculate as to where missing parts may end up, nor does it assess the potential impact on national security.

Published this month, it makes no mention of a recent episode where parts from Royal Australian Air Force F-35As disappeared in Hong Kong while being shipped to the USA. The Pentagon is probing the incident, in which parts including an F-35 canopy may have fallen into the hands of Chinese intelligence agencies.

“Specifically, GAO found that DoD has not established procedures that ensure its own records will be sufficient to account for and financially report on the parts,” it says.

“For instance, records of F-35 parts in the F-35 programme’s accountable property system of record (APSR) remain unreliable, since they do not reflect real-time changes and are inaccurate and incomplete.”

Moreover, the F-35’s JPO has not established procedures to validate the data in the APSR.

The GAO offered recommendations to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth for improving the DoD’s management of F-35 parts. These focus on improved accountability, documentation, procedures, and training.

The Department of War’s replied to a draft version of the report on 14 September, days before the disappearance of F-35 parts in Hong Kong came to light. It agrees with he GAO’s recommendations and said it is taking action.

“The department concurs and has had direct engagement with the JPO on this specific issue,” it says.

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