The Pentagon Still Can’t Account for F-35 Parts Worth Millions
The F-35 parts system is an inventory valued at approximately $31 billion, spread across more than 700 government- and contractor-managed facilities. It contains about 26 million parts. That is a lot of equipment, a lot of buildings, and apparently not enough reliable paperwork to tell the public what happened to previously reported losses valued at more than $85 million. The Pentagon can build a fighter jet that costs serious money; keeping a dependable inventory appears to be the part that keeps taxiing in circles.
A very large inventory, a very basic problem
In a report released November 9, the Government Accountability Office found that the Defense Department does not maintain complete, reliable records and physical inventories for F-35 parts. This is not a dispute about whether a spreadsheet looks tidy. If officials cannot trust the records or verify what is physically on hand, they cannot reliably oversee property spread across hundreds of facilities. The systems meant to track the parts are supposed to answer the boring questions—what is there, where is it, and what happened to it. Those are also questions taxpayers have a right to expect someone can answer.
The most eye-catching figure needs careful handling. GAO reported losses valued at more than $85 million in a 2023 review. As of March 2026, the Joint Program Office could not determine the status of those earlier reported losses. That does not establish that the parts were stolen or that the full amount is currently missing. It establishes that officials could not determine what became of the reported losses. That is already a serious oversight failure without upgrading uncertainty into a crime story.
The accounting fog has a second layer
GAO also found that the program office could not determine whether a prime contractor’s approximately $28 million in submitted losses included any of the earlier losses. Read that twice before anyone starts adding figures in a cable-news graphics department: GAO did not establish that the $28 million was separate from the earlier amount, or that it entirely overlapped. The relationship could not be determined. When the official record cannot tell whether two piles of reported losses are connected, the public is left with numbers and no dependable map.
GAO recommended stronger procedures for monitoring losses and improving property accountability. The Defense Department concurred. That is a useful first step, not proof that the problem has been fixed. A recommendation is paperwork with teeth only if the agency follows through and can show that its records and inventories now work.
The takeaway is not that every unaccounted-for part was stolen. It is that a vast, expensive public program cannot provide a clear account of previously reported losses or reliably reconcile later submissions. Oversight depends on knowing what the government owns and what happened when something goes missing from the books. If the answer is still “we can’t determine that,” the public is paying for the aircraft and the fog machine.