More than a million F-35 spare parts were reported lost by one prime contractor between May 2018 and October 2022, together worth over $85 million. Three years after the Government Accountability Office first flagged them, the Pentagon’s F-35 program office still cannot say whether they were found, written off or billed to anyone. A new GAO audit, published Nov. 9, found that the office does not know the status of those losses as of March 2026.
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The gap sits inside a much larger inventory: about 26 million parts at more than 700 contractor- and government-run sites, valued at roughly $31 billion.
Tracing the $85 million figure to one contractor
The number originates in GAO’s May 2023 report, which found that one F-35 prime contractor had incurred losses of over 1 million spare parts totaling over $85 million since May 2018, and that the F-35 Joint Program Office had reviewed less than 2 percent of them. As of October 2022, the same contractor had not reported more than 900,000 lost parts, valued at over $66 million, for the office’s review. The new GAO report does not name the contractor. The program has two engine and airframe primes, Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney.
The full 2026 report says the Joint Program Office does not know the status of those earlier losses and has not kept documentation of them, so it cannot tell whether the $85 million was ever reported or adjudicated. GAO also cautioned in 2023 that the figure may not represent the full quantity and value of lost parts, since the values are not fully burdened costs.
The weakness is not new. GAO’s May 2022 review of F-35 asset reporting found that the Defense Department had relied on contractor data that was sometimes inaccurate and could not verify about $16 million in assets listed in those records, with officials saying the real error amount was likely much higher. That report made 12 recommendations, and GAO’s page lists nine of them as still open.
A 2025 bulk reporting effort that cannot be matched to the old losses
In 2025, the Defense Contract Management Agency authorized a bulk-reporting process in which the contractor submitted about $28 million in losses dating from 2012 through 2025. The agency has so far found the contractor financially liable for about $6 million. GAO says the program office cannot determine whether any of the original $85 million is inside that $28 million. In other words, the $6 million found so far may or may not overlap with the older, larger figure, and no document the office kept can settle that question.
The program office approved inventory adjustments for some losses without follow-up, even when the required loss paperwork was incomplete or late. It started an ad hoc spreadsheet in September 2025 that listed 57 cases as of April 2026.
Records GAO calls outdated, inaccurate and incomplete
The audit’s central finding is about the records, not just the losses. Auditors under Asif Khan, GAO’s director of financial management and assurance, found that the Pentagon’s records of its F-35 parts are outdated, inaccurate and incomplete. The program office has not fully developed procedures to validate what is entered into its property system, and GAO has an open recommendation on that from an earlier report.
Physical counts have not closed the hole. The program office has spent at least $17 million on physical inventories since fiscal 2020, but GAO says the 2025 count did not fully verify that parts exist. It relied on data from a prime contractor whose property system the Defense Contract Management Agency had rated disapproved, and it was not a wall-to-wall count. A first full, auditable inventory is targeted for March 2027. Air & Space Forces Magazine’s coverage of the audit adds that program officials told GAO the $31 billion figure is probably an undercount, and that some tracking data updates only quarterly.
What GAO recommends and how the Pentagon answered
On GAO’s report page, the auditors say the program office lacks procedures to review losses at government-managed facilities, which limits its ability to detect fraud, waste or theft. In the magazine’s account, GAO wrote that unless it implements procedures for monitoring losses, the F-35 Joint Program Office will not know the full extent of losses of F-35 parts. The office is responsible for about 70 percent of the parts held at government-managed sites; contractors hold about 30 percent.
GAO made four recommendations: monitor submission of loss information and run trend analyses, and write F-35-specific procedures, training and a defined structure for accountable property officers. All four remain open. The Defense Department concurred with each, and a program office spokesperson told the magazine that procedures and training for those officers are being developed and that systems are being modernized with real-time data links.
A Lockheed Martin spokesperson told the magazine the company remains focused on readiness, affordability and sustainment for the growing global fleet, and pointed to more than $2 billion in advance funding for spare parts. The unresolved number is the $85 million itself: GAO’s report shows no one in the program office can currently say how much of it was recovered.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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