Pentagon Awards Record $1.6B F-35 Spare-Parts Deal
A $1.6B order, the biggest in F-35 history, restocks the global spares pool as the Pentagon doubles down on fleet readiness.
U.S. Air Force photo, DVIDS, public domain
The Pentagon has awarded Lockheed Martin a $1,603,067,858 firm-fixed-price order for F-35 spare parts, the largest such contract in the program’s 25-year history, restocking the global logistics pool that keeps the world’s most numerous fifth-generation fighter fleet flying. The order, announced July 15 and confirmed by Lockheed on an earnings call July 23, is roughly 2.8 times the size of last year’s spares deal and more than four times September 2024’s.
What the money actually buys
This is not a new-aircraft purchase. The order, designated N0001926F2171 against a previously issued basic ordering agreement, funds initial spares for F-35 production aircraft across four distinct logistics categories: the global spares pool, base-level spares packages at operating airfields, deployment spares packages for forward-deployed units, and afloat spares packages for F-35Bs and F-35Cs flying from ships. Work will be performed at Lockheed’s Fort Worth, Texas, final-assembly plant, with completion projected by September 2033, an eight-year tail typical of how the F-35 program pipelines spare-parts production against a fleet that will keep growing throughout that period. Naval Air Systems Command at Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity, and the deal was not competed, standard for a program where Lockheed remains the sole prime integrator responsible for the global supply chain.
The funding split shows who is actually paying for what. Fiscal 2026 Air Force aircraft-procurement funds cover $754,705,797 of the order, the largest single share. Navy funds contribute $223,126,752. F-35 partner nations, the eight original program partners plus later entrants, are chipping in $138,793,588. And foreign military sales customers, countries buying the F-35 through the US government rather than as program partners, account for $486,441,721, nearly a third of the total. That FMS share is a useful marker of how far the F-35 export base has grown: more than 20 nations now operate or have ordered the jet, and each pays into the same shared pool their own aircraft draw from.
Why the F-35 doesn’t let each operator buy its own parts
Most fighter programs let each operator manage its own spare-parts inventory. The F-35 does not. Instead, the F-35 Joint Program Office centrally procures spare parts for a single global pool, and operators purchase access to that pool in proportion to how many F-35s they own and how many flight hours they plan to fly, according to a Government Accountability Office description of the arrangement. That pooled-logistics model is meant to reduce redundant inventory and let parts move to wherever the fleet needs them most, but it also means a single contract like this one has to satisfy the Air Force’s F-35A fleet, the Marine Corps and Navy’s F-35B and F-35C variants, and dozens of allied air forces simultaneously, through detailed internal “business rules” that govern how costs and parts are allocated across participants. The F-35A, F-35B and F-35C share this same supply chain despite being distinct airframes tuned for conventional runways, short takeoff and vertical landing, and carrier operations respectively.
“The largest such contract in F-35 history, reinforcing the Department of War’s heightened focus on keeping the world’s premier fighter fleet operational,” said James Taiclet, Chairman, President and CEO of Lockheed Martin, on a July 2026 earnings call (Air & Space Forces Magazine, July 23, 2026).
The July 2026 order is roughly 2.8 times last year's spares deal and more than four times September 2024's, a jump too large to explain by inflation or fleet growth alone.
The readiness backdrop driving the number up
The size of the increase lines up with a broader shift in how the Pentagon is funding F-35 sustainment overall, not just this one contract. Air Force spending on initial spares and repair parts across its whole fleet, not the F-35 alone, was budgeted at $982 million in fiscal 2025. In fiscal 2026, boosted by additional reconciliation-package funding, that more than doubled to $2.22 billion, and the service is seeking $2.57 billion for fiscal 2027. That trajectory reflects a persistent problem: a Government Accountability Office report from June 2026 found full mission-capable rates for all three F-35 variants sitting around 25 percent, with the Air Force’s F-35A performing best of the three at 28.5 percent, still meaning roughly three of every four jets on the ramp on a given day were not fully ready for every assigned mission. Parts shortages have been a recurring driver of that gap, and Air Force leadership, including Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, has told Congress directly that shelf-stocked spares are a precondition for keeping the fleet flying, not a secondary concern. This contract does not fix that readiness picture by itself, but it is a concrete, dollar-denominated data point in the same direction: the Pentagon spending meaningfully more, this year, specifically to get parts onto shelves faster than it has in any prior F-35 spares order.
Read in that light, the record size of this single order says less about F-35 production accelerating and more about the Pentagon trying to close a maintenance gap that has dogged the program for years, one funded dollar and one spare part at a time rather than through a single fix.
Sources
- Pentagon Awards Largest-Ever F-35 Spare Parts Contract — Air & Space Forces Magazine, Jul 23, 2026
- Contracts for July 15, 2026 — GlobalSecurity.org (Department of Defense contracts announcement), Jul 15, 2026
- Pentagon Awards Record $1.6 Billion 'Most Advanced Fighter Jet In The World' Spare Parts Deal — Aviation A2Z, Jul 25, 2026
- Defense Watch: F-35 Spares, SPEAR Integration, C-UAS and UAS News, $5B for AI — Defense Daily, Jul 24, 2026
Systems mentioned
Every system named in this story, with its photo and, where available, a video. Tap a card to open the full spec sheet.
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Fighter aircraft
F-35A Lightning II
Fighter aircraft
F-35B Lightning II Fighter aircraft
F-35C Lightning IIFrequently asked questions
Why don't the Air Force, Navy and Marines just buy their own F-35 spare parts separately? +
The F-35 Joint Program Office runs a single global spares pool instead of separate service inventories. Operators, including the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, partner nations and foreign military sales customers, buy access to that shared pool based on how many F-35s they own and how many flight hours they plan to fly, rather than each stocking its own warehouse of parts.
How much bigger is this deal than prior F-35 spares orders? +
At just over $1.6 billion, it is roughly 2.8 times last year's $578 million spares order, and more than four times the $348 million order from September 2024. Lockheed Martin's own CEO called it the largest spare-parts contract in F-35 program history.
Is this contract for new F-35 aircraft or something else? +
Neither buys nor upgrades a single airframe. It funds spare parts, the components that keep already-delivered F-35s flying, covering the global spares pool, base-level stock, and packages for deployed units and ships through afloat spares packages.
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