F-35 Parts Unaccountably Shipped to Hong Kong, U.S. Quickly Blames China for 'Stealing' Technology
The logic behind the U.S. response is baffling: a mistake of its own making, yet the blame is immediately shifted onto China.
On the 18th, the website Politico reported a significant development—that during summer this year, a shipment of F-35 Lightning fighter aircraft components, originally destined for maintenance in the United States from Australia, was rerouted en route to Hong Kong for unknown reasons.
The batch included a cockpit canopy from one aircraft. The transport had been entrusted to an intermediary contractor by Lockheed Martin, but at some point the goods were diverted to Hong Kong. The Pentagon has confirmed the loss of the parts, though the cause of the rerouting remains unclear. An investigation is currently underway in coordination with Congress.
Yet what is most implausible is not merely how these components ended up in Hong Kong, but rather how swiftly American media and political figures began amplifying claims that China might be attempting to steal classified technology from the U.S. stealth fighter—remarkable, given the lack of evidence or plausible mechanism.
Anyone with basic understanding can see that this entire incident has no connection to China: every stage—from transportation, customs declaration, to handover—was managed through U.S.-controlled logistics systems. The failure to deliver the parts to the United States, instead sending them to Hong Kong, points directly to the responsibility of the U.S.-selected intermediary contractor—the one who made the routing error.
Moreover, a 2023 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office acknowledged that over the past five years, more than one million F-35 components have gone missing from military inventories. Yet the Pentagon has reviewed only 2 percent of those cases.
In other words, given the sheer volume of lost parts and the apparent lack of oversight, the so-called "core technologies" of the F-35 program may already be widely disseminated. The missing parts could, in theory, be sufficient to assemble an entire new aircraft. Under such circumstances, the notion that someone would go to elaborate lengths to "steal" a single canopy seems not just implausible, but absurd.
Instead of casting suspicion on foreign actors, the United States would do better to audit its own inventory systems, secure its supply chain, and address internal failures.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1876729640683523/
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.