New Delhi: Believe it or not, a shipment carrying parts for the F-35 Lightning II stealth aircraft, en route from Australia to the US, ended up in Hong Kong, with reports suggesting that the shipment is now in Chinese possession.
The unexpected diversion has triggered a probe by the US Department of War, which Wednesday launched an internal investigation alongside Lockheed Martin, the F-35’s prime contractor, to review the entire logistics infrastructure.
According to the information available till now, UPS (United Parcel Service) was in late May shipping a cockpit canopy and weapons-bay door, both coated with stealth paint, from an Australian military F-35 to the US for inspection and possible repair or disposal.
The UPS flight travelled from Australia to a transit hub in South Korea, from where it was diverted to Hong Kong.
Bloomberg reported that the Chinese government later took possession of the parts, and so far hasn’t returned them.
While State Department and Pentagon officials initially briefed US congressional staff about it in June 2026, the incident was kept under the wraps until it was leaked and reported by Politico on 18 September 18, based on the accounts of two anonymous sources.
The report came days before US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are scheduled to meet. The meeting is expected later today.
When asked about the incident, Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles told a press conference Tuesday outside the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Base in Edinburgh near Adelaide that parts took a detour and ended up in Hong Kong.
He denied that the missing parts were “sensitive equipment”. “We are obviously working with the United States and obviously its prime contractor here, Lockheed Martin, in respect of this,” he said. “We are examining very much everything that has occurred at the Australian end
China has in the past been accused of widespread espionage focussed on Pentagon’s secret programmes, including the F-35.
In 2007, Chinese hackers had allegedly breached the Pentagon’s Joint Strike Fighter project and allegedly stole data related to the F-35 fighter jet.
According to a deep study by Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, Chinese hackers stole classified information about the technologies onboard F-35 Joint Strike Fighters again in 2012.
Interestingly, a 2023 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report had highlighted that contractors had lost track of more than 1 million spare F-35 parts worth $85 million, and that the Department of Defense had reviewed fewer than 2 percent of the identified losses.
The Pentagon is under pressure to completely overhaul how components are tracked and shipped globally.
The F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) confirmed it is putting new safeguards in place to avoid a future occurrence by giving Lockheed Martin complete control over their choice of commercial carrier as well as other overhaul measures to make the operation more secure.
Ashwin Shekhar is an alum of ThePrint School of Journalism, currently interning with ThePrint.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
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