The Pentagon remains unable to reliably track millions of F-35 spare parts worth billions of dollars, years after government watchdogs first exposed serious weaknesses in its inventory system. A new Government Accountability Office report says accountability remains badly compromised.

The GAO said Monday that although the War Department’s F-35 program “is the costliest in its history,” the department “struggles to account” for the parts supporting the aircraft.

The watchdog described records for F-35 components as “outdated, inaccurate, and incomplete.” It also found that “DoW has made minimal progress in attaining and maintaining accountability for F-35 parts” since the problems surfaced seven years ago.

The latest findings follow multiple audits conducted since 2019 by the GAO and the Department of War Inspector General. Those reviews identified numerous problems involving the tracking of parts.

Trump's Sovereign Wealth Fund: What Could It Mean For Your Money?

Unlike most aircraft programs, the F-35 program largely depends on a joint pool of spare components, including engines and tires. The pool supports the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, along with international customers.

As of March 2026, that joint pool contained approximately 26 million spare parts valued at around $31 billion, according to the GAO. About 17,000 parts worth up to $2.5 billion were not recorded in the Pentagon’s Enterprise Logistics Management System.

The accountability gap is hardly new. In 2023, the GAO reported that one prime contractor lost more than 1 million F-35 spare parts valued at more than $85 million between 2018 and 2022.

As of March 2026, the F-35 Joint Program Office still did not know the status of those items. The program has two prime contractors, Lockheed Martin for the airframe and Pratt & Whitney for the engines.

FREE Gun Law Map: Laws Don't Pause During Social Unrest

Image Credit: DoW

The U.S. Air Force awarded Lockheed Martin a $1.6 billion contract for additional spare parts in July. At the same time, the inventory systems used by the F-35 Joint Program Office continue to face major reliability problems.

“For instance, 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 GAO report states.

The Enterprise Logistics Management System also cannot track joint spare parts in real time “because ELMS does not currently interface with the two prime contractors’ property management systems.” That leaves Pentagon officials dependent on information maintained elsewhere.

“DoW 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,” Asif Khan, director of GAO’s financial management and assurance team, told Defense News.

For joint spares, the F-35 Joint Program Office relies on information provided quarterly by the prime contractors. Consequently, “joint spares pool data in ELMS may be more than 3 months old.”

The location of some spare parts is not always clear because the prime contractors are not consistently aware of inventories held by their subcontractors. Contract data requirements lists submitted quarterly by the prime contractors also assigned strikingly low values to some components.

“Almost 6% of records of F-35 parts, also from the December 2025 CDRL, showed an acquisition cost of $0.01 or less, also indicating a possible data quality error,” the GAO noted.

The watchdog delivered a blunt verdict on the Pentagon’s records and inventory results. “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 states.

Determining how many of the approximately 26 million spare parts are actually missing remains difficult. “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,” Khan said.

Questions also remain about whether the tracking failures are hampering F-35 operations. The GAO warned earlier this year that poor accountability for parts is complicating attempts to improve the program, while customers have sought greater supply chain transparency to allocate resources properly.

“For several years, we’ve been reporting that DoW 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,” Khan said.

The opinions expressed by contributors and/or content partners are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Objectivist. Contact us for guidelines on submitting your own commentary.