The Government Accountability Office report has found that more than 1 million F-35 spare parts worth at least $85 million have gone missing over the last five years. This is due to disagreements between the Defense Department offices and the main F-35 contractor, Lockheed Martin, over how to categorize missing parts. Lockheed Martin is working with the F-35 Joint Program Office and the Defense Contract Management Agency to ensure documentation is available to support disposing of components that staff judged to be "excess, obsolete or unserviceable".
The F-35 program has exceeded the 95% accuracy goal set by the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement rules, with an error rate of around 1%. The International F-35 program has a unique system for managing its spare parts, with the Defense Department owning the parts until they are installed on a fighter.
Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney manage the global pool of spare parts, but the Pentagon didn't draw up a plan to maintain accountability. The vast majority of lost F-35 parts don't get adjudicated to review the circumstances behind their loss, figure out whether the government or a contractor was responsible, and identify the root causes of what caused a part to go missing. The JPO is working with the Pentagon and Lockheed Martin to report lost parts in a system called the GFP Module, but Lockheed doesn't consider these parts to be government-furnished property.
The F-35 program also has more than 19,000 parts that are unusable due to extra, obsolete, or unserviceable. GAO auditors recommend that William LaPlante, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, take steps to make sure all spare F-35 parts worldwide are categorized in the right way and are accountable under a contract. He should also work with the F-35 program executive officer to issue a process for contractors to report lost spare parts.