WASHINGTON — Greater than 1 million F-35 spare parts price no less than $85 million have gone missing over no less than the last five years, in accordance with a brand new Government Accountability Office report criticizing this system’s supply tracking.
Auditors said that because the federal government doesn’t have its own system tracking those parts, officials may not truly know the way many spare parts are literally in the worldwide spares pool, where they’re, or their total value.
Consequently, “the total quantity and value of those [lost] spare parts could also be significantly higher” than the 1 million tally determined by the principal contractor, Lockheed Martin, the document reads.
And disagreements between Defense Department offices and the principal F-35 contractor, Lockheed Martin, over learn how to categorize missing parts are holding up the federal government’s effort to create its own reliable system to maintain track of the parts, the GAO report states.
In brief, the F-35 program can’t know whether contractors are properly managing spares, in accordance with auditors, who’ve tracked losses going to back to 2018.
In a press release to Defense News, Lockheed Martin said the tally of spare parts listed as lost within the report cover the last twenty years of this system.
Lockheed Martin said it’s working with the F-35 Joint Program Office and the Defense Contract Management Agency to be certain that they’ve the documentation needed to support disposing of components that staff judged to be “excess, obsolete or unserviceable.”
“Lockheed Martin manages F-35 spare part inventory in compliance with contract requirements,” the corporate told Defense News. “We proceed to partner with the Joint Program Office to extend insight into spare part availability and support fleet readiness.”
The F-35′s program office said in an email to Defense News that it also agreed with GAO’s recommendations on ways to enhance tracking of spare parts — but said “we all know where the overwhelming majority of F-35 spare parts are in the worldwide supply chain.”
The Defense Department office pointed to the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Complement rules that said programs should strive to have their recorded inventories accurate about 95% of the time, and said the F-35 program exceeds that goal.
“Right now, our error rate is around 1%,” this system office said. “While this is taken into account significantly better than the federal government goal of 5%, we are going to proceed to work with the services and our industry partners to enhance spare parts accountability and drive readiness for our warfighters.”
The JPO also said that F-35 spare parts are actually being tracked through a non-government system, but that it’s working with industry to maneuver the information to a government system.
The international F-35 program, which incorporates the USA and other nations resembling the UK, Norway, Italy, Canada, Israel, Japan and South Korea, has what GAO called a “unique” system for managing its spare parts. All participants in this system worldwide have access to a world pool of spare parts — every thing from engines, tires, landing gear and support equipment right down to bolts and screws — that the Defense Department owns until an element is installed on a fighter.
But while DoD owns the spare parts that each one nations flying F-35s depend upon, Lockheed Martin, which builds and repairs a lot of the F-35′s air frame, and Pratt & Whitney, which handles the F-35′s engines, manage the worldwide pool. Those parts are stored in greater than 50 domestic and international facilities run by contractors aside from Lockheed and Pratt.
A part of the issue with parts tracking lies within the Pentagon’s decision a decade ago to shift course on who owns them, GAO said. Originally, the U.S. military didn’t intend to own those parts, GAO said, but in 2012 the F-35 program issued a memo that said they belong to the U.S. government until they’re installed on a fighter.
However the Pentagon didn’t draw up a plan to keep up accountability over those F-35 parts and equipment, GAO said, as Lockheed and Pratt continued to be liable for them and supply data on them.
Auditors also said the overwhelming majority of lost F-35 parts don’t get adjudicated to review the circumstances behind their loss, work out whether the federal government or a contractor was responsible and discover the basis causes of what caused an element to go missing.
Of those 1 million lost spare parts over the past five years, Lockheed Martin submitted about 60,000 parts price about $19 million to the JPO to be adjudicated, GAO said. The JPO finished adjudicating fewer than 20,000 missing spare parts.
Lost parts that weren’t reported to the JPO include 35 actuator doors price greater than $3.2 million, and 14 batteries price greater than $2.1 million, which were lost within the last three months of 2019, the report said.
A debate that has been happening since 2015 between several Pentagon offices and the 2 principal contractors over how these parts must be categorized can also be hampering efforts to higher track parts. The JPO, Pratt, the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, and the Defense Contract Management Agency’s aircraft propulsion office imagine these spare parts must be considered government-furnished property, GAO said.
But Lockheed and DCMA’s office in Fort Value, Texas, disagree, GAO said.
The JPO wants Lockheed Martin to report lost parts in a system called the GFP Module, which tracks government-furnished property, GAO said. The JPO said it’s working with the Pentagon and Lockheed to work out learn how to make that occur, considering Lockheed doesn’t consider these parts to be government-furnished property — but those talks “are within the early stages,” GAO said.
The F-35 program also has greater than 19,000 parts in the worldwide spares pool which can be unusable because they’re either extra, obsolete, or unserviceable, GAO said. Those parts have been sitting anywhere from a couple of months to 5 years while the positioning personnel have awaited instructions on learn how to eliminate them.
A few of these parts may be reused elsewhere inside DoD, donated to other organizations resembling state governments, sold as scrap, or destroyed, GAO said. But because Lockheed isn’t using the GFP Module to ask the JPO for instructions on what to do with these parts, it’s as a substitute informing the JPO about unusable parts on an “ad hoc” basis, the report said.
GAO auditors recommend of their report that William LaPlante, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, take steps to be certain that all spare F-35 parts worldwide are categorized in the best way and are accountable under a contract, and update policies to make it clearer when parts are considered government-furnished property.
Auditors also said LaPlante should work with the F-35 program executive officer, Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt, to issue a process for contractors to report lost spare parts, and to be certain that instructions are issued on learn how to do away with excess or otherwise unusable spare parts, until those parts are entered into the GFP Module to be adjudicated or track their disposal.
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.