Marles said the defence department is выясняя how F-35 components sent from Australia to the US were unexpectedly rerouted to Hong Kong. According to him, Australia will review “everything that happened on the Australian side” of this supply chain.
He said the issue does not involve sensitive equipment or sensitive parts, and that the matter will then be handled by the US and Lockheed Martin, the program’s prime contractor. Marles added that the cargo was being transported on behalf of the manufacturer by another, as yet unnamed, party.
The last known location of the components — Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China — has raised concerns that technological secrets of the program may have been exposed. Politico, citing sources, reported that the shipment may have contained an F-35 cockpit canopy, which is said to contain stealth technology.
Michael Shoebridge, director of Strategic Analysis Australia and a former intelligence official, said such parts could interest an adversary for reverse engineering or for finding aircraft vulnerabilities. He called the cargo’s stop in Hong Kong an “extraordinarily stupid” move for either the manufacturer or Australia.
Australia was one of the early partners in the F-35 program, and more than 70 Australian companies have contracts to produce and support these aircraft. In Victoria, more than 700 critical parts are manufactured, in New South Wales there is a regional spare-parts distribution hub, and the value of Australian companies’ contracts in the supply chain had exceeded $5.2 billion as of September 2025.
Last week, the US State Department said the Trump administration would continue the sale of 48 F-35s to Saudi Arabia, despite reports of alarm within the US intelligence community over the risk of China gaining access to some stealth technology. The episode once again drew attention to the vulnerability of the F-35 program’s supply chains.
Sources
