The U.S. military does not yet know how long a temporary hold on F-35 fighter jet deliveries will be in place but is working to resolve the issue after officials discovered a part within the aircraft used raw materials from China, the Pentagon’s top acquisition official said Friday.
Under Secretary of Defense for acquisition and sustainment William LaPlante said an investigation is underway and “moving quickly” to look into how an alloy made in China ended up in magnets in the turbomachine pumps of the Lockheed Martin-produced F-35.
The use of the Chinese materials in the F-35’s turbomachine, made by Honeywell, is not allowed under Defense Department regulations, prompting the Pentagon earlier this week to stop accepting new jets from Lockheed.
Both the F-35 Joint Program Office and Lockheed have insisted that the Chinese-sourced alloy was magnetized in the United States and does not give any other country access to sensitive information, adding that there are no safety issues.
“They’re looking at two things — one, impact on security, if any, and impact on air worthiness or safety, if any,” LaPlante told reporters. “Right now, so far it doesn’t appear to be either of them.”
If the investigation finds neither is a problem, LaPlante can then issue a national security waiver to “get the production line moving again,” and deliver assembled jets that already contain the alloy.
Issuing such a waiver means the Pentagon would not move to replace the part at issue in aircraft that have already been delivered.
All of the more than 825 F-35s so far delivered since 2003 have the Chinese alloy within them, Bloomberg reported earlier Friday.
LaPlante partly blamed the oversight on issues with the ever-shifting defense industry supply chain. Even major weapons firms aren’t always aware of the details of their supplies, he noted.
Lockheed, for example, revealed Wednesday that the company that provided Honeywell the Chinese alloy was a fifth-tier supplier to the larger firm.
“I’ve just seen enough cases of discovering things in supply chains that I wouldn’t be surprised by anything,” he said. “Any company that says they know their supply chain is like a company saying they’d never been hacked, so it’s an endless battle.”
An alternative, U.S. source for the alloy will be used in future turbomachines, according to the Pentagon and Lockheed.