Delivered to the Wrong Address? F-35 Parts Re-routed to Hong Kong

Por Robert Farley — The Diplomat

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The F-35 is a supremely advanced fighter aircraft with many proprietary components that would be of immense value to several foreign intelligence services. It is also a consumer product.

A U.S. Air Force F-35A Lightning II, assigned to the 158th Fighter Wing, takes off from Burlington International Airport in South Burlington, Vermont, March 11, 2026.

Last summer a shipment of F-35 parts was reportedly re-routed to Hong Kong from its intended destination in Australia . Australia is a partner in the F-35 program; the People’s Republic of China is not. U.S. authorities are reportedly trying to recover the parts and prevent future breaches. The incident has caused consternation in the United States and Australia, both of which have effectively committed to the F-35 as the foundation of their future airpower. And yet the mis-shipment has made clear a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the F-35 project; high tech proprietary classification does not go well with an aggressive policy of export and offshoring. 

In short, it’s hard to keep aspects of the F-35 secret when the United States is aggressively trying to sell the aircraft abroad. 

We do not yet fully understand whether this was an innocent (if catastrophic) error, or if it was the result of a complex and successful Chinese espionage operation. If the latter, we don’t know if Chinese intelligence has been able to exploit the shipment, though it appears that Beijing is in possession of the errant parts . But even if the diversion of the shipment to Hong Kong was accidental and not part of an espionage operation, the incident highlights some of the contradictions inherent in the F-35 program.

The F-35 is a supremely advanced fighter aircraft with many proprietary components that would be of immense value to several foreign intelligence services. It is also a consumer product that the United States has been trying to aggressively export over the past two decades to most every country in the Global North and a few in the Global South. Jonathan Caverley has called the F-35 “America’s Belt and Road,” because of both its substantial expense and because of its integrated production over several countries and integrated maintenance over several more. Work in all of these countries is spread among dozens of contractors and subcontractors , each of which offers a potential weak link in terms of keeping the parts of the aircraft secret and secure. 

There are a limited number of countries that could usefully exploit the technology in the shipment, and China is one of them. Of particular concern is the canopy, which represents an enormous technological and financial investment and which could conceivably benefit China’s aerospace industry. As with most such cases, the issue here is less that Chinese engineers could copy the equipment and then integrate it into their own aircraft (modern industrial aerospace techniques are remarkably complex) but rather that careful study could reveal vulnerabilities or characteristics that could eventually give Chinese pilots a tactical advantage. 

It’s worth noting that the F-35 is no longer a youthful aircraft. It has been in active service for more than a decade, flies for 12 different countries (and often for more than one air force per country), and boasts some 1,200 operational units across the world. It has flown in combat for Israel and the United States in several wars. Given this record, there’s only so much that can be done to keep the details of the aircraft’s manufacture and performance secret from China or Russia. China has its own fifth-generation fighters and has already worked out many of the problems associated with the critical technologies. Indeed, both China and the United States have moved onto sixth-generation programs. Thus, the availability of the canopy of the F-35 may be important, but it’s hardly critical. That said, while entrusting important components of a mainline fighter aircraft to UPS may be unwise, it was also probably inevitable given the nature of the project. 

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Last summer a shipment of F-35 parts was reportedly re-routed to Hong Kong from its intended destination in Australia . Australia is a partner in the F-35 program; the People’s Republic of China is not. U.S. authorities are reportedly trying to recover the parts and prevent future breaches. The incident has caused consternation in the United States and Australia, both of which have effectively committed to the F-35 as the foundation of their future airpower. And yet the mis-shipment has made clear a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the F-35 project; high tech proprietary classification does not go well with an aggressive policy of export and offshoring. 

In short, it’s hard to keep aspects of the F-35 secret when the United States is aggressively trying to sell the aircraft abroad. 

We do not yet fully understand whether this was an innocent (if catastrophic) error, or if it was the result of a complex and successful Chinese espionage operation. If the latter, we don’t know if Chinese intelligence has been able to exploit the shipment, though it appears that Beijing is in possession of the errant parts . But even if the diversion of the shipment to Hong Kong was accidental and not part of an espionage operation, the incident highlights some of the contradictions inherent in the F-35 program.

The F-35 is a supremely advanced fighter aircraft with many proprietary components that would be of immense value to several foreign intelligence services. It is also a consumer product that the United States has been trying to aggressively export over the past two decades to most every country in the Global North and a few in the Global South. Jonathan Caverley has called the F-35 “America’s Belt and Road,” because of both its substantial expense and because of its integrated production over several countries and integrated maintenance over several more. Work in all of these countries is spread among dozens of contractors and subcontractors , each of which offers a potential weak link in terms of keeping the parts of the aircraft secret and secure. 

There are a limited number of countries that could usefully exploit the technology in the shipment, and China is one of them. Of particular concern is the canopy, which represents an enormous technological and financial investment and which could conceivably benefit China’s aerospace industry. As with most such cases, the issue here is less that Chinese engineers could copy the equipment and then integrate it into their own aircraft (modern industrial aerospace techniques are remarkably complex) but rather that careful study could reveal vulnerabilities or characteristics that could eventually give Chinese pilots a tactical advantage. 

It’s worth noting that the F-35 is no longer a youthful aircraft. It has been in active service for more than a decade, flies for 12 different countries (and often for more than one air force per country), and boasts some 1,200 operational units across the world. It has flown in combat for Israel and the United States in several wars. Given this record, there’s only so much that can be done to keep the details of the aircraft’s manufacture and performance secret from China or Russia. China has its own fifth-generation fighters and has already worked out many of the problems associated with the critical technologies. Indeed, both China and the United States have moved onto sixth-generation programs. Thus, the availability of the canopy of the F-35 may be important, but it’s hardly critical. That said, while entrusting important components of a mainline fighter aircraft to UPS may be unwise, it was also probably inevitable given the nature of the project. 

Robert Farley is a senior lecturer at the University of Kentucky’s Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce.

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Fonte: The Diplomat