The Pentagon continues to struggle to account for thousands of F-35 fighter jet spare parts worth billions of dollars, raising fresh concerns about inventory management and financial oversight in the United States’ most expensive weapons programme.
A new report released Monday by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the Department of Defense (DoD) has made little progress in addressing longstanding deficiencies in its management of F-35 spare parts, despite repeated warnings and investigations over the past seven years.
The government watchdog described the Pentagon’s records of F-35 spare parts as “outdated, inaccurate, and incomplete,” warning that existing systems cannot provide reliable information about the location, ownership or value of components used by the aircraft programme.
“DoD has made minimal progress in attaining and maintaining accountability for F-35 parts,” the report said, highlighting persistent weaknesses since the problems were first identified in 2019.
The findings are particularly significant because the F-35 operates through a shared international spare parts inventory rather than separate supply systems for individual military services and countries.
Components, including engines, tires and other aircraft equipment, are maintained in a common inventory serving the US Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, alongside international F-35 operators.
According to the GAO, the shared inventory contained approximately 26 million spare parts valued at an estimated $31 billion as of March 2026. However, around 17,000 components worth as much as $2.5 billion were missing from the Pentagon’s Enterprise Logistics Management System (ELMS), the database responsible for tracking government property and logistics records.
The absence of these components from the system raises questions about the Pentagon’s ability to maintain accurate records of its assets and ensure that expensive aircraft parts are properly accounted for across the programme.
The latest investigation also revealed that problems identified in earlier audits remain unresolved.
In 2023, the GAO reported that a major contractor had lost track of more than one million F-35 spare parts valued at over $85 million between 2018 and 2022. However, as of March 2026, the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) had still not determined the status of those components.
The failure to establish what happened to the missing parts underscores the scale of the accountability problems facing the programme, which relies on an extensive network of contractors, suppliers and military logistics organisations.
Lockheed Martin, the aircraft’s airframe manufacturer, and Pratt & Whitney, which produces its engines, are the two principal contractors involved in the F-35 programme.
The Pentagon continues to spend heavily on maintaining the aircraft fleet and replenishing its supply network. In July 2026, the department awarded Lockheed Martin a $1.6 billion contract to supply additional spare parts.
However, the GAO found that the Pentagon’s existing logistics infrastructure is not sufficiently integrated with contractors’ property management systems, preventing the government from tracking the shared inventory in real time.
Without effective data sharing between the Pentagon and its contractors, officials cannot consistently establish where individual components are located, whether they have been transferred or used, and whether government property records accurately reflect the inventory.
The watchdog also identified potential errors in the financial information recorded for F-35 components.
An analysis of a December 2025 dataset found that almost 6 percent of entries listed spare parts with acquisition costs of $0.01 or less. Such unusually low values could indicate errors in the underlying data and raise concerns about the reliability of the programme’s financial reporting.
The GAO warned that these weaknesses affect not only inventory management but also the Pentagon’s ability to establish the actual value of government-owned assets.
“Neither records of F-35 parts in ELMS nor F-35 JPO’s inventory results are reliable for the purpose of asset accountability or financial reporting,” the report stated.
The findings add to a growing list of management and sustainment challenges facing the F-35 programme, which is central to the US military’s plans for maintaining air superiority and strengthening interoperability with allied forces.
The aircraft, developed by Lockheed Martin, is operated by the US military and numerous international partners. Its shared logistics system is intended to simplify maintenance, improve parts availability and reduce the costs associated with supporting a multinational fleet.
