Peter Cronau

Leaked shipping records show Australian F-35 parts continuing to reach Israel on passenger aircraft, with shipments now routed through the United States rather than Thailand.

Following last year’s revelations of the secret shipping of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel through Thailand from Sydney, new documents show that parts are now being routed onto passenger jets through the United States.

New shipping records leaked to Declassified Australia show the secret cargo of Australian parts for Israel’s F-35 fighter jets has been diverted onto passenger planes of US airline United Airlines.

After two years being flown on Thai Airways planes, the records indicate the sensitive shipments leaving Sydney are no longer regularly flying through Bangkok but are now taking a longer pathway through the United States.

This logistical pivot seems to have come after exclusive reporting last year by Declassified Australia in October that has shown multiple exports of F-35 fighter jet parts from Sydney to Israel via Bangkok.

For months senior ministers had been claiming firstly that Australia exports no weapons at all to Israel, then conceding that exports may be going to a US global hub, and then claiming that only non-lethal weapons parts were exported to Israel.

When challenged about the F-35 parts supply route through Bangkok to Israel as reported by Declassified Australia, the government doubled down. Greens Senator David Shoebridge raised questions in the Senate, with Foreign Minister Penny Wong responding:

“The F-35 as part of the global F35 supply chain, we contribute components and parts that are non-lethal in nature.”

Further leaks to Declassified Australia revealed that by November last year the total of known exports of F-35 fighter jet parts since October 2023 had reached at least 71 shipments.

Of particular relevance to the foreign minister’s claim, these shipments included a gasket for the F-35’s four-barrel 25mm GAU-22/A cannon that fires 3,300 rounds per minute to devastating effect in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran – certainly a very lethal weapon.

Despite months of ministers’ denials and farcical claims, no amount of political spin could now convince the public that the export of items such as a cannon part was ‘dual use’ or ‘non-lethal’. With this reporting, every element of the government’s cover story has now fallen apart.

The new route

On Wednesday, 10 December 2025, the new secret pipeline of F-35 parts went live.

According to new shipping records leaked to Declassified Australia, the first F-35 fighter jet part flown out of Sydney on the new airline and the new route was described obscurely as a ‘Clamp’.

It was however clearly labelled as being for the ‘JSF’, the Joint Strike Fighter, and was marked as having been sent to Israel from ‘2314 Williamtown’, which is the unique postcode address of RAAF Base Williamtown, home of Australia’s fleet of F-35A Joint Strike Fighters. Williamtown is also home to BAE Systems’ Regional Sustainment Depot, which provides repairs and maintenance for the F-35s.

In Sydney on a clear December afternoon, United Airlines scheduled passenger flight number UA870 left from Sydney International Airport’s Terminal 1 just after midday, heading north-east across the Pacific on a 13-hour flight to San Francisco.

The leaked shipping records show the package on board the flight was offloaded in San Francisco International Airport onto another United Airlines passenger flight, UA2248, for a five-hour hop to New York’s Newark Liberty International Airport. The following day it left on the 10-hour final leg of its journey on United Airlines passenger flight UA84, touching down at Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv in Israel on the morning of Friday, 12 December 2025.

The minimal time spent in transit with connecting flights continuing the journey to Israel is important. It shows the parts were not in the USA for sufficient time for further manufacture or repair, nor for storage in a US global F-35 parts hub. They flew from Australia through the United States to Israel in just two days.

This suggests the new routing may have been developed for the purpose of ‘origin laundering’, where ministers and Defence officials in Australia could claim no F-35 weapons parts are being sent to Israel direct from Australia but are merely added to a global hub in the US to which Israel has access.

The total flying distance to Israel from Australia via the United States of 25,000 km is considerably longer than the previous 14,400 km trip from Sydney to Tel Aviv via Bangkok. This extra time and cost taken to get the parts to Israel must have been considered an acceptable burden to bear – perhaps as the price to stay off the radar of inquisitive Australian journalists.

The leaked documents showing the route alteration confirm that despite mounting public scrutiny, the flow of lethal F-35 components from Australia to Israel has continued uninterrupted.

If the purpose of the rerouting of the F-35 parts package through the United States had been to ‘wash’ the part’s origins of its Australian connection, it failed.

More F-35 parts

Over the three months following Declassified Australia’s December report, there have been a total of nine additional Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) aircraft parts flown out of Sydney International Airport on United Airlines passenger flights via the US to Tel Aviv in Israel.

Of these Joint Strike Fighter parts for the Israelis’ F-35 fighter jets, five shipments were dispatched by the RAAF Base Williamtown base and were flown from Sydney International Airport via the US to Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport, labelled as follows:

• ‘Clamp’, exported on United Airlines flight UA870 on 10 December 2025 – via San Francisco and New York to Tel Aviv.
• ‘Coax, Band 3/4’ (possibly part of the aircraft’s electronic warfare system) exported on United Airlines flight UA842 on 20 December 2025 – via Los Angeles and Washington DC to Tel Aviv.
• ‘Tool, Valve HP’ (potentially a tool for removing high-pressure wheel struts) was exported on 23 December 2025 – via San Francisco and New York to Tel Aviv.
• ‘Bushing’ on United Airlines UA842 on 9 January 2026 – via Los Angeles and New York to Tel Aviv.
• ‘Connector Crclar Mini Plg’ on United Airlines UA842 on 15 February 2026 – via Los Angeles and New York to Tel Aviv.

Another four parts packages marked for the Joint Strike Fighter were dispatched to Israel via the US from a freight distribution hub in western Sydney:

• ‘Coax Cable Band 2; O’Ring’ on United Airlines UA870 on 24 January 2026 – via San Francisco and Norfolk to Tel Aviv.
• ‘Inboard Bearing Cone/Rollers’ on United Airlines UA842 on 31 January 2026 – via Los Angeles and Chicago to Tel Aviv.
• ‘Bolt, External’ on United Airlines UA842 on 15 February 2026 – via Los Angeles and New York to Tel Aviv.
• ‘O’Ring’ on United Airlines UA870 on 17 February 2026 – via San Francisco and Washington DC to Tel Aviv.

According to all of the leaked shipping documents examined by Declassified Australia, this now brings to 80 the total of documented parts marked for the Joint Strike Fighter and secretly exported to Israel on passenger planes from Sydney International Airport between October 2023 and February 2026.

Decreasing visibility

Given the obscure naming of many other parts contained in the shipping documents examined, there is good reason to believe the true total of parts exported for the JSF may be greater than the 80 parts so far documented in the leaks.

Two further dispatches not specifically labelled as being for the Joint Strike Fighter but labelled as ‘Aircraft Parts’ were sent to Israel in February, described obscurely as:

• ‘Aircraft Parts – Ring Retaining Outboard’; and
• ‘Aircraft Parts – Washer Tanged Piston Cap’.

The records show these ‘Aircraft Parts’ were dispatched from Richmond (home of RAAF Base Richmond) onto the same United Airlines flight UA97, leaving Brisbane International Airport on a warm summer morning at 11.45am on Thursday, 5 February. Their destination was San Francisco International Airport, from where they were forwarded to connecting flights for the last leg to Ben Gurion International Airport, arriving on Saturday, 7 February.

Other records of shipments are proving even more opaque, and may indicate that the number of F-35 fighter jet parts being exported to Israel is even greater. At least 19 further shipments of unidentified goods were booked to be dispatched from RAAF Base Williamtown and RAAF Base Tindal, between February and July this year, to Nevatim, the location of Israel’s Nevatim Airbase in the Negev Desert, home to its F-35 fleet.

Curiously, the shipping records listing these shipments do not show the airline flights nor the specific routes planned to be taken to Israel. There is insufficient evidence to say that these booked flights actually took place. The shipments were also strangely booked without any description listed for the goods, but they were all marked as being ‘Subject to ITAR’.

ITAR is the US State Department’s ‘International Traffic in Arms Regulations’, setting out the controls for the movement of weapons and defence items. All such ‘ITAR’ parts are listed on the US’s Munitions List of defence-related items and services including military hardware, guidance systems, armaments, military aircraft, related technical data, software and components.

While such parts are described as controlled by the US’s ITAR export regulations, any exported from Australia must still each get sign-off by the Australian minister for defence, under regulations tightened since the start of the destructive and bloody Israel–Gaza conflict.

Thai Airways was ‘unknowing’

In February, Thai Airways International’s chief executive, Chai Eamsiri, stated the airline did not knowingly transport military aircraft components heading from Australia to Israel.

This came after a Thai Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) story had reported details first published in Declassified Australia and subsequently raised in questioning in parliament by Senator David Shoebridge.

“In terms of safety, if the cargo is classified as dangerous goods, we do not transport it… It is for customs authorities in each country to determine whether the items comply with the law,” the chief executive said.

Defence Minister Richard Marles since June 2024 is meant to exercise his ministerial scrutiny of defence exports “to every potential shipment to Israel”. The minister and his department are required to ensure that those items approved for export will not be used in breach of international law.

While the Australian government might now be able to say that no F-35 parts are sent direct from Australia via Thailand to Israel, it cannot say the same about parts going via the United States.

Nor can it say these parts, newly documented as being flown through the US, were merely for placing into a global parts hub. The leaked shipping records show that F-35 parts and other aircraft parts were flown, albeit through the US, direct to Israel.

Declassified Australia contacted both United Airlines and the Department of Defence to ask a series of questions about the flights, and on the security considerations given to the use of passenger airplanes for the exports of military parts from Australia. Neither took the opportunity provided to them to respond by deadline.

The apparent shift to exporting F-35 fighter jet parts from Australian stocks to Israel via the United States on passenger planes underlines the high-stakes diplomacy and operational secrecy surrounding Australia’s role in supplying military weapons to Israel, a country credibly condemned by international legal and humanitarian bodies as committing genocide in Gaza, war crimes in Lebanon, and breaches of international law in Iran.

https://declassifiedaus.org/2026/08/13/shadow-flights-leaks-reveal-us-route-of-f35-parts/

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