The finding exposes a procurement-to-maintenance bottleneck that will surface in the next LRIP contract negotiation: if DOD cannot account for existing inventory, it cannot justify production rates based on actual demand, which forces Lockheed to bid conservatively and absorb the cost of higher-than-necessary manufacturing margins to hedge against readiness shortfalls.
The GAO's open recommendation since 2022 (GAO-22-105002) without closure also signals that JPO lacks either the budget or the authority to implement system fixes, which means the next appropriations cycle will face pressure to fund a property-management system overhaul that competes for dollars against actual platform modernization.
Lockheed Martin's F-35 supply chain now operates without real-time inventory visibility across its global footprint, which means neither DOD nor the prime can reliably determine whether parts are available for combat readiness or have been lost to fraud, waste, or theft.
The $85 million in untracked losses since 2023 signals a three-year accounting gap that persists because JPO has not implemented validation procedures or loss-monitoring controls.
This creates a hard constraint on warfighter readiness: if DOD cannot confirm parts exist or locate them when needed, depot-level maintenance and squadron availability projections become unreliable, forcing logistics planners to assume higher attrition rates and potentially accelerate procurement to compensate for inventory uncertainty.
Has the F-35 JPO submitted a remediation timeline to Congress, and does it include specific milestones for APSR system modernization and physical inventory audit completion by a named date?
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