The F-35 is the most expensive weapons program in U.S. military history — and a new federal watchdog report reveals that the government still cannot reliably account for the billions of dollars’ worth of spare parts that keep those jets in the air. According to the Government Accountability Office, records describing those parts have been called “outdated, inaccurate, and incomplete,” raising serious questions about how taxpayer money is being managed.
The new report, released Monday, found that the Department of Defense has made only minimal progress fixing its F-35 parts tracking failures — even though government auditors first identified the problems seven years ago. The DoD’s own records for the F-35 program were described by the GAO as failing to meet basic standards for asset accountability or financial reporting.
Billions in Parts, Minimal Oversight
Unlike most military aircraft, the F-35 program uses a shared pool of spare parts — including engines and tires — distributed across the U.S. Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and international partner nations. As of March 2026, that shared pool contained roughly 26 million parts valued at approximately $31 billion.
Yet about 17,000 of those parts, worth as much as $2.5 billion, were not recorded in the Pentagon’s primary logistics platform, the Enterprise Logistics Management System (ELMS). The GAO noted a further data quality concern: nearly 6 percent of parts records from a December 2025 contractor data submission listed an acquisition cost of $0.01 or less.
Part of the problem is structural. ELMS does not connect in real time with the property management systems used by the program’s two prime contractors — Lockheed Martin, which builds the airframe, and Pratt & Whitney, which manufactures the engines. Because the F-35 Joint Program Office relies on data submitted by those contractors only once per quarter, the inventory figures in ELMS can be more than three months out of date at any given time.
The U.S. Air Force awarded Lockheed Martin a $1.6 billion contract for additional spare parts in July. Meanwhile, prior audits going back to 2019 by both the GAO and the DoD Inspector General have repeatedly flagged these same systemic failures.
Lost Parts, Unknown Losses
A 2023 GAO report exposed that one prime contractor had lost more than one million F-35 spare parts worth over $85 million between 2018 and 2022. As of March 2026, the F-35 Joint Program Office had still not determined what happened to those items.
The scope of ongoing losses remains impossible to quantify. The Pentagon only learns a part is missing when staff at a contractor-managed or government-managed facility notices and reports the loss — there is no automated detection. Complicating matters further, prime contractors are not always aware of what inventory their own subcontractors are holding.
Asif Khan, director of the GAO’s financial management and assurance team, explained the core problem plainly: “DoD does not have its own complete records of F-35 parts, and, as a result, does not know when a part is lost unless staff at the contractor-managed or government-managed facility identifies and reports the loss.”
When asked whether an aggregate count of missing parts could be provided, Khan was direct: “Because the F-35 JPO has not established and implemented effective procedures for monitoring losses, we are unable to provide an aggregate estimate of how many of the 26 million parts are lost.”
The GAO’s report also flagged that the F-35 program’s own accountable property system of record is unreliable, noting that “records of F-35 parts in the F-35 program’s accountable property system of record remain unreliable, since they do not reflect real-time changes and are inaccurate and incomplete.” The report concluded bluntly that “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.”
What the GAO Is Recommending
The watchdog agency outlined several steps the F-35 Joint Program Office should take. These include creating stronger procedures for identifying and recording lost parts — with built-in trend analysis to help prevent future losses — and making greater use of trained accountable property officers who can maintain reliable records specific to the F-35 program.
Khan also pointed to a broader consequence of the accountability gap, one that affects military readiness and spending decisions alike: “For several years, we’ve been reporting that DoD cannot ensure that the prime contractor is providing sufficient readiness at a reasonable cost without an understanding of the parts it owns and how the prime contractor manages those parts.”
Partner nations and military branches that rely on the F-35 have also been pressing for greater supply chain transparency so they can more effectively manage their own resources, Khan noted. The GAO had previously warned earlier this year that poor parts accountability is making broader improvements to the F-35 program more difficult to achieve.
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