China reportedly holds F-35 parts diverted to Hong Kong

What happened

China’s government has taken possession of “potentially sensitive” F-35 stealth fighter jet parts “inexplicably diverted” to Hong Kong while being sent to the U.S. from Australia via UPS, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the incident. The Pentagon’s F-35 Joint Program Office told Politico last week it was “aware of a shipment issue” involving F-35 parts and was “actively working” to retrieve them.

Who said what

The diverted cockpit canopy and weapons-bay door contain “stealth technology that only the U.S. and its allies have access to,” Politico said, citing sources, and the late May reroute “triggered an ongoing series of briefings” for congressional national security staff. The F-35 is “widely recognized as America’s best and most advanced fighter jet,” Bradley Bowman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies said to The Associated Press. China has been “aggressively trying to get F-35 data through electronic espionage,” former congressional military analyst J.J. Gertler told Politico. But studying a part’s schematics is different than “possessing a real one.”

Lockheed Martin manages the F-35 supply chain and “uses commercial shipping providers to transport parts,” Politico said. The Government Accountability Office reported in 2023 that more than 1 million F-35 parts had gone missing over the previous five years.

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What next?

The F-35 Joint Progress Office said it was working with “industry partners” to investigate the Hong Kong diversion and “place safeguards to avoid a future occurrence.”