Australia has exported F-35 fighter jet parts directly to Israel
Leaked documents seen by independent investigative outlet Declassified Australia reveal that Australia has exported F-35 joint strike fighter parts directly to Israel as recently as this week.
Parts and components for Israel’s F-35 fighter jets are being exported directly to Israel from Australia, despite repeated government denials of the trade, Declassified Australia revealed in a significant story it published last night.
These exports present clear evidence of the Australian government’s complicity in Israel’s war crimes.
Declassified Australia reported that it had sighted shipping records detailing goods sent on two recent flights from Sydney to Tel Aviv. It is unclear whether the documents simply show two individual shipments or are a glimpse of a bigger Australian direct export trade of F-35 parts to Israel.
This is the first concrete information of parts for Israel’s F-35 fighter jets being sent directly from Australia to Israel, some 21 months after 7 October 2023. It is evidence the Australian government can no longer deny or disguise.
Israel’s F-35s have been used to commit war crimes in Gaza, including airstrikes on designated safe zones that have killed hundreds of people. The fighter jets were also deployed during Israel’s recent illegal airstrikes on Iran.
Read the full story at Declassified Australia
Refresher: our 2024 reporting on Australia’s F-35 exports
Last year Undue Influence reported extensively on Australia’s export of parts and components into Lockheed Martin’s F-35 global supply chain and the Australian government’s misleading public commentary around this.
Most of our reports were also published by Declassified Australia, which was established in 2021 by investigative journalists Peter Cronau and Antony Loewenstein to publish in-depth and largely hidden stories that reveal the reality of Australia’s relationships with both democracies and dictatorships.
Our reporting below is referred to in the latest Declassified Australia article.
Buck-passing inside the murky arms trade
‘It is almost literally true that Australia cannot go to war without the consent and support of the US.’
Decoded: Defence Department's deadly deceits
After spending nine months denying any weapons were going to Israel, senior Australian government ministers are now in damage control after a Defence Department official admitted for the first time since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 that there are active export permits relating to Israel that cover the transfer of parts and components.
Lockheed Martin, Australian Government: joined at the hip
Global weapons giant Lockheed Martin – which has deleted from its website details about Australia’s key role in building F-35 fighter jets – has long had deep ties to the Australian government, investigations show.
Lockheed Martin deletes Australian F-35 ties
Among the details quietly scrubbed from Lockheed Martin’s website are that Australian businesses are supplying components ‘for the entire F-35 fleet’ and that, ‘Every F-35 built contains some Australian parts and components’.
Australia and the F-35 supply chain: in lockstep with Lockheed
Australia is one of six western countries that are complicit in the ‘genocidal erasure’ of the Palestinian people by continuing to supply Israel with arms, according to Dr Ghassan Abu-Sitta, a British-Palestinian surgeon and newly elected rector of Glasgow University.
Secrets of the weapons trade
It is the standard government talking point: ‘Australia is not sending weapons to Israel and has not done so for the past five years.’