He F-35 Lightning IIthe fighter more expensive and complex never built, is going through a critical point in its history. In September 2025, a report of the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealed that all deliveries in 2024 arrived late, accumulating an average of 238 days late. Now, a leak has revealed that delays can multiply, and China plays a fundamental role.
The problem of the largest military program. They remembered a few months ago on Insider that the 2024 delays had one main cause: the stagnation of the Technology Refresh 3 technology package (TR-3), an essential hardware and software update on which the block 4 modernizationalready with an extra cost of 6,000 million dollars and five years behind schedule.
The paradox was that, despite maintenance failures, deficiencies in availability and costs that already exceed 2 trillion dollars Throughout its service life, the F-35 remains the cornerstone of American and allied air defense. More than 2,500 units remain in the Pentagon’s planning, while the current fleet is barely “operational” half of the time.
More money. Lockheed Martin, its prime contractor, continues to receive incentives even for late deliveriesin a program that no longer only faces technical delays, but a much more structural threat: global dependence on its supply chain.
A global network. The F-35 is, by definition, a multinational aircraft. Of the more than 1,200 devices manufactured to date, about 42% of its components are produced outside the United States, in an industrial network that involves more than twenty countries. The United Kingdom, the only Tier 1 partner, manufactures in Lancashire the rear fuselages of all the F-35s in the world, as well as their tails, ejection seats and part of the electronic warfare system code.
Italy and the Netherlands assemble structures and optical systems, while Australia, Canada, Norway or Denmark provide fuselage sections, wings or specialized electronics. Germany, Japan and Israel also contribute critical parts: from fuel tanks to helmet-mounted visors. This ecosystem, which combines thousands of suppliers under a single oversight, has made the F-35 the largest industrial cooperation project of defense of the planet.
The small print. But, despite the geographical dispersion, total control The United States preserves it: the Department of Defense and Lockheed Martin jealously guard it the source codemaintenance keys, stealth algorithms and the ALIS logistics system, without which no country can operate the aircraft independently.
Each export includes clauses that maneuvers are prohibited joint with Russian or Chinese systems and allow Washington to supervise every flight, every review and every software update.
You hunt like hotcakes. By 2025, Lockheed Martin has opted to reverse the narrative of delays with a figure that reflects both ambition and vulnerability: manufacturing 200 fighters in a single yearone for each working day. In its third quarter earnings call, CEO Jim Taiclet announced that 143 units had already been delivered, with an order book valued at 179 billion dollars, the largest in the company’s history.
The boom responds to the global increase in defense spending, with European countries accelerating its rearmament and new buyers (such as Finland or Japan) incorporating the F-35 as the central axis of their fleets. The plane has become a tool deterrence and cohesion between allies, a symbol of interoperability under the umbrella of Washington. But industrial success hides a strategic fragility: the complex network of components of the F-35 depends, directly or indirectly, on materials that almost entirely come from Chinafrom rare earth magnets to elements for critical sensors, servomotors and actuators.
Beijing’s silent weapon. Through a Wall Street Journal exclusive We have learned that, while Lockheed Martin celebrated its best year for deliveries, China moved its own parts with surgical precision. Beijing announced the creation of a system of “validated end users” (VEU) to regulate the export of magnets and rare earth metals: essential materials for both F-35 fighters and submarines, drones or electric vehicles.
The plan, presented as a measure of trade opening after the tariff truce between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, in reality aims to exclude any company from the flow of exports. linked to the military complex United States. In other words, the companies that supply the F-35 (from engine manufacturers to aerospace subcontractors) will be blocked, while supplies to civilian industries are prioritized.
Strategic deterrence. With this system, Beijing can formally fulfill its promise of liberalize tradewhile suffocating the critical chains of the North American defense sector. The VEU architecture, inspired by the United States’ own export control mechanisms, turns industrial policy into a deterrent instrument strategic.
The bottleneck. Chinese control over rare earths (70% of the extraction and more than 90% of the world’s processing) places Washington before a structural dilemma: Your most advanced hunting depends on a monopolized resource by its main geopolitical rival. Although the White House seeks to diversify sources through agreements with countries such as Kazakhstan, Greenland or Ukraine, replacing Chinese capacity will take years.
In recent months, Chinese magnet exports to the United States fell 29%which has already begun to affect engine and guidance system manufacturers. If Beijing strictly implements its new system, it would not only slow down F-35 production, but could temporarily interrupt the logistics chain for maintaining fleets already deployed. In that scenario, the program that symbolizes Western technological supremacy would be conditioned by dependence on a strategic enemy.
The paradox of a fighter. The F-35 was born as an emblem of interoperability and technological masterybut its evolution shows that military superiority is no longer measured only in radars or missiles, but also in access to mineralschips and advanced materials.
As the world’s most expensive plane is assembled from parts manufactured on three continents and with magnets processed in China, its story becomes a metaphor for the 21st century: a war of interdependencies where each fighter that takes off carries within it a dose of global vulnerability.
Thus, while Lockheed Martin tries to maintain its record pace of production and the Pentagon reinforces its leadership narrative, the real battlefield is being fought in the mines, laboratories and customs of the planet, where the next great defense crisis may arise not from a hypersonic missile, but from an industrial bottleneck.
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