[Edaily Reporter Bang Sung Hoon ] It has been revealed that parts for U.S. F-35 stealth fighter jets ended up in Chinese hands because an employee at the U.S. logistics company UPS missed a single warning email. The email contained a warning that the shipment must not transit through a specific country, but the parts were shipped via Hong Kong—and the consequences of this oversight were severe.

According to Bloomberg News on the 7th (local time), U.S. Department of Defense officials held a roughly one-hour meeting with staff from the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services Committees on the 29th of last month and explained that the shipping route had been mistakenly changed to Hong Kong while attempting to expedite the delivery of parts that had been delayed in Australia.

The parts—an F-35 cockpit canopy and a weapons bay door coated with radar-absorbing material—were being shipped from Australia to the United States in late May for repair or disposal. They were originally scheduled to travel to San Francisco via South Korea and Taiwan, both U.S. defense partners.

DSV, the logistics company handling the shipment on behalf of Lockheed Martin—the developer of the F-35—sent an email stating that, under the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), these parts were not permitted to pass through certain countries. ITAR is a set of regulations designed to prevent sensitive U.S. weapons technology from falling into the hands of hostile nations. However, sources indicated that the email may have been sent via an information technology (IT) system different from the one used by UPS employees.

This incident has caused embarrassment for the Department of Defense and Lockheed Martin, as a series of errors allowed China to gain access to the United States’ most sensitive military technology. The Department of Defense and the State Department have launched investigations, and Congress is calling for a review of the entire weapons supply chain. The F-35 is the world’s most advanced fighter jet and the most expensive weapons program in U.S. history; China has been conducting intelligence operations targeting the F-35 for years.

Diana Maurer, who oversees F-35-related audits at the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), noted, “It’s not good that China got its hands on an F-35 canopy,” calling it “a major problem.” She added, “China would have certainly raised a toast and then immediately begun reverse-engineering it to find a way to respond with its own technology.”

At the meeting, Erica Plass, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, announced that the team she had assembled had taken steps to prevent a recurrence. An official from the State Department’s Bureau of Defense Trade Controls, which is responsible for enforcing export control laws and is investigating this incident, was also present. Earlier, Senator Mark Warner, the Democratic ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, had requested a briefing from the Department of Defense on this incident, while Committee Chairman Tom Cotton called for a review of the supply chain.

Republican Senator Kevin Cramer, the subcommittee chairman on the Senate Armed Services Committee who is investigating this incident, raised the question, “Did China plan to intercept these parts from the very beginning?”

Meanwhile, the Department of Defense distanced itself from the shipment, downplaying the incident by stating that the parts were in an “unusable” condition. The U.S. Military Transport Command also drew a line, stating, “We were not involved in the transportation or coordination of that shipment.” The Department of Defense stated, “We are working with U.S. authorities and industry to recover the parts, investigate the incident, and develop measures to prevent a recurrence.”

Lockheed Martin, which manages a significant portion of the spare parts for the F-35s operated by the U.S. and 19 other countries, stated last month that “logistics decisions are not made unilaterally.” Regarding the newly revealed circumstances, the company said, “We have nothing to add or correct.”

DSV and UPS declined to comment. Following the Bloomberg report, UPS’s stock price fell by less than 1% on the New York Stock Exchange.