How Australia supplies weapons to Israel

Since 7 October 2023, the Australian Government has consistently maintained that it does "not provide weapons to Israel". However, that claim relies on a narrow legal framing — a technical truth that obscures a more worrying reality, writes Tyson Parker.

THE LINE between where Australian sovereignty ends and allied/contractor logistical control begins has blurred. Through the mechanisms of the F-35 supply chain, Israel can draw from a pooled sustainment system that is consistently fed by over 70 Australian companies, without Australia needing to approve the exports or provide components directly.

Through international agreements, legislative amendments, supplier contracts and pooled logistics, Australia has a growing role in the program, with every F-35 built containing Australian-made components.

On 5 June 2024, the Department of Defence provided the clearest articulation of the administrative reality.

When pressed on whether Australian-made components in the global F-35 pool were being used by the Israel Defence Forces, Department of Defence Deputy Secretary Hugh Jeffrey stated:

“The question of whether or not the F-35 is being employed in the crisis in Israel is not material to the question of whether or not we grant an export permit.”

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Declassified Australia documented 68 shipments of Australian-made F-35 components, sent to Israel between October 2023 and September 2025, with 51 addressed to Nevatim airbase, home of Israel’s F-35 squadrons.

In October 2025, the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee heard questions about reports that F-35 components were shipped from Australia to Israel during the war in Gaza.

Responding to Declassified Australia’s article, Jeffrey said, “the Australian Government does not have any direct relationship with the Israeli Government on the F-35 program".

A close examination of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program does suggest that the Australian Government’s position is accurate, although only due to outsourcing control of component exports.

Unlike traditional arms sales, where a manufacturer sells a tank or rifle to another country, the F-35 operates under a Global Support Solution (GSS).

Under the 'Production, Sustainment and Follow-on Development (PSFD) Memorandum of Understanding', the relationship is legally asymmetrical.

While the U.S. is required to conduct 'prior consultation' with partners before transferring parts to a third party, Australia (or any other country) is contractually barred from transferring F-35 components, without the ‘prior written consent’ of the U.S. Government (sections 13.1 and 13.2 of the PSFD).

Effectively, this grants Washington a veto over Australian supply decisions.

Even if Canberra wanted to supply parts directly to Israel, it would require explicit U.S. permission to do so.

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Conversely, if the U.S. decides to redistribute Australian-made parts, Australia has limited legal power to override that decision, aside from being consulted.

In 2024, as a result of the AUKUS agreement, another mechanism was introduced, further restricting Australian officials’ ability to assess and determine exports.

The Defence Trade Controls Amendment Act 2024, designed to facilitate the AUKUS alliance, creates a permit-free environment for shipments to the USA and UK.

Under these amendments, the requirement for individual export permits for goods sent to the U.S. global pool has largely vanished.

The human rights assessment trigger contained in Regulation 13E of the Customs (Prohibited Exports) Regulations 1958 – which requires certain exports to be assessed for the risk of facilitating serious human rights abuses – does not appear to apply in the same way to transfers within the AUKUS licence-free environment.

Although exporters must still report specifics on shipments, this is more of a notification rather than an approval process and despite requirements to provide information on an initial destination, there’s no obligation to report a final end-point.

This is an intentional policy decision made by the Australian Government and as a result, Australian-made F-35 components can flow into the U.S. inventory without ministerial oversight or sign-off.

It is explicitly stated in the 2025-29 Defence Corporate Plan that Defence aims to significantly reduce ‘the number of export permits to the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, facilitated via the AUKUS Licence-Free environment’ in order to lessen ‘regulatory burden.’

This has enabled ‘the elimination of around 900 export permits required under the previous export controls from Australia to the United States and United Kingdom’ as of 1 September 2024.

An Auditor-General Report (2018-19) explicitly states that participation in the F-35 global pool involves ‘[U.S.] Government ownership of spares’ and ‘centralised supply chain management'.

This means that the moment a component, such as a weapon adaptor produced by Ferra Engineering or weapons bay systems from Rosebank Engineering, enters the supply chain, it ceases to be Australian-owned or controlled.

Components are then shipped from Australian manufacturers to regional warehouses across the globe (including one located at Williamtown, New South Wales).

This system essentially ends many of Australia’s legal obligations at hand-off to the U.S., either at the gates of Williamtown or upon shipment to another global depot in the Netherlands or USA.

Components in the U.S. inventory are primarily managed by a computerised logistics system (ALIS, transitioning to ODIN) that distributes parts based on global operational priority, which remain U.S. property until installed on an aircraft.

This system creates further complexity in blocking supplies destined for Israel exclusively.

For Australia to effectively prevent parts going to Israel, components would need to be blocked from entering the global supply pool entirely.

This would impact all participants in the program collectively, including regional partners such as Japan and South Korea.

This reality was outlined most explicitly in a U.K. High Court judgment (Al-Haq v Secretary of State for Business and Trade) delivered in mid-2025.

The Court accepted evidence from Keith Bethell, Director General Air within the Ministry of Defence, that the system is ‘...simply not designed to enable any of the Participants to make unilateral decisions in relation to altering the organisation and structure of the program'.

Mr Bethell also stated that ‘the only way for the UK to ensure that its components do not reach Israel is for it to suspend all exports into the F-35 program’, which is consistent for all participant countries.

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The case also acknowledged that:

'...in relation to the Global Spares Pool it was generally not possible to determine who the end user would be'

For partners in the F-35 program, denying individual components to specific end-users is extremely difficult, if not effectively impossible.

There’s a further implication for Australia that has a more direct impact.

Under the current system, Australia could easily be left without critical components to keep its own fleet operational, if the U.S. decides to prioritise supply to other countries (including itself and Israel).

This risk is compounded by persistent spare-parts shortages and sustainment shortfalls documented in Australian, UK and U.S. audit reporting.

The F-35 program has effectively established a precedent where industrial integration within the U.S. military-industrial complex can limit independent export control and sovereign decision-making.

It raises serious questions about what visibility and leverage Australia retains over Australian-made components once they enter the F-35 sustainment system and just how much this impacts our own defence capabilities.

Great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.

You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination.
~ Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, World Economic Forum, January 2026