Missed ITAR alert let UPS send F-35 parts to Hong Kong

The F-35 parts left Australia late. In late May, the Royal Australian Air Force sent the canopy and weapons-bay door to San Francisco, where they were to be inspected and then repaired or disposed of. The cargo plane stopped in South Korea on the way.

According to the report, freight company DSV had emailed UPS to make clear the items had to be shipped under ITAR rules. But the message may have gone through a different IT system from the one the UPS agent used, so the agent never saw it.

Seeing that the shipment was running behind, the agent chose to send it through Hong Kong to make up time, instead of routing it via South Korea or Taiwan. Once the parts reached Hong Kong, Chinese authorities took them.

ITAR stands for the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. These are US rules that control how weapons, military parts and related technical data move around the world, including which countries and territories they must avoid.

Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China, and it is on that banned list. Under ITAR, F-35 hardware should never pass through it. That’s why the route was first described as inexplicable when the story broke in late September, weeks before the missed-email explanation emerged in early October.

A canopy and a door may not sound like secrets. The worry is what’s on them. Both pieces were coated with radar-absorbing material, the special finish that helps the F-35 avoid being seen on radar.

That coating could be more valuable than the parts themselves. US officials are concerned that China could study and reverse engineer it, which could weaken the stealth advantage the US and its allies have relied on for decades.

The Pentagon has tried to play down the loss. The F-35 Joint Program Office said it was aware of a shipment issue involving unserviceable F-35 Lightning II components. Not everyone agrees it’s minor. A representative of the Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan congressional watchdog, called the loss “a big deal” and suggested Chinese engineers would be pleased.

A Defense Department spokesperson said officials are working with US authorities and industry partners to get the components back, investigate what happened and add safeguards so it doesn’t happen again.

Australia’s Defense Minister, Richard Marles, said his country was working with the United States and Lockheed Martin, which builds the F-35, to help the investigation.

China has not returned the parts. Its Foreign Ministry in Beijing said it was unaware of them, and there has been no sign that China admits to holding them or plans to release them. Neither DSV nor UPS commented when asked about the missed email.

For most people, the direct effect is zero. You won’t be shipping fighter jet parts. But the story is a sharp reminder that a lot of sensitive defense cargo moves on ordinary commercial carriers, and that is common practice, not an exception.

The weak link here wasn’t a hacker or a spy. It was a warning that landed in the wrong system and a worker trying to speed up a late package. Many companies, from banks to hospitals, face the same risk when critical instructions travel by email across different firms and software.

Expect questions about why an email, rather than a hard block in the booking system, was the main safeguard keeping banned routes off the table for military cargo. Readers who run a business that ships regulated goods should check that compliance flags travel with the shipment record itself, not in a separate message someone might miss.

The investigation by US authorities is ongoing, and officials haven’t given a timeline for recovering the parts. The key things to watch are whether China ever confirms it holds them, what the Pentagon’s inquiry finds about the handoff between DSV and UPS, and whether carriers change how they flag ITAR shipments.