F-35 story is as much a political and industrial one as it is a technical or military program.

Lockheed Martin and allied contractors turned the Joint Strike Fighter into a near-untouchable political project by spreading work and jobs across the country, investing heavily in lobbying and campaign contributions, exploiting procurement contract design, and using revolving-door networks and sympathetic narratives to blunt critics and shield the program from cuts.

Below is a deeper, sourced account of how that lobbying and political strategy unfolded and why it matters.

1. A program born in competition — and then protected politically

The F-35 originated as the Joint Strike Fighter competition in the 1990s to produce a family of next-generation fighters for the Air Force, Navy and Marines. Once Lockheed Martin won the contract, the dynamic shifted: the company’s interest changed from winning a competition to sustaining an enormously costly, decades-long production line. That meant political protection became almost as important as meeting performance milestones. The Congressional Research Service and GAO reviews of the program document both the program’s scale and repeated cost, schedule, and technical issues that called for scrutiny. 

2. “Hooking” nearly the whole country: jobs as politics

One of the single most consequential lobbying moves was Lockheed’s deliberate geographic strategy. By designing the F-35 industrial base to include thousands of suppliers across dozens of states, Lockheed engineered a powerful political constituency: members of Congress from nearly every region had something to lose if the program were cut. Investigative reporting described how the program involved suppliers in some 45 states and created hundreds of thousands of direct and indirect jobs — a distribution that made cancellation politically costly. That geographic dispersion turned the program into a jobs bill as much as a weapons program. 

3. Heavy, sustained political spending and access

Lockheed Martin is among the largest corporate spenders on lobbying and campaign contributions in the defense sector. The company’s multi-million-dollar annual lobbying budgets and PAC contributions buy repeated access to key committee members (Armed Services, Appropriations) and congressional staff who shape the NDAA and appropriations. Those financial flows are visible in lobbying and contribution databases: Lockheed’s organization page shows large, sustained lobbying and giving totals that map onto the years Congress kept the F-35 funded even when the Pentagon raised concerns. 

4. Contract structure, procurement leverage, and “capture”

Lobbying wasn’t only about checks and job lists. Contractual and acquisition choices matter: Lockheed secured program terms and intellectual-property/data rights that gave it long-term control over aircraft sustainment, parts, and software. Critics and watchdogs (e.g., Project on Government Oversight) argue these arrangements made the services dependent on the prime contractor and complicated oversight — because the company controlled critical technical data and sustainment infrastructure. Those structural features reduced the Pentagon’s leverage and made congressional rescues of the program more likely. 

5. Narratives, think tanks, and the revolving door

Lockheed and allied contractors also invested in messaging: they funded research, allied think-tank papers, and industry PR that framed the F-35 as essential to deterrence, alliance interoperability, and industrial base health. Former Pentagon officials and congressional staffers frequently moved into industry roles (and vice versa), creating networks that amplified industry arguments and normalized the program’s continuation. The revolving-door flow of people made it easier for industry to translate technical issues into political talking points — and to win sympathetic ear from ex-colleagues who remained influential. 

6. Results: political protection, export markets, and program scale

Those combined strategies produced outcomes industry wanted: sustained high production rates, large multi-year orders from the U.S. and partner nations, and a near-taboo status for cancellation. Even as audits, GAO reports, and Pentagon inspectors raised issues about cost growth and delays, Congress repeatedly authorized continued funding and sometimes added quantities above what the services requested. Export sales to NATO and allied partners further entrenched the program because partner governments and industrial partnerships created additional diplomatic and economic pressure to keep the program alive. (Deliveries and program scale remain large; Lockheed reported high delivery numbers and the F-35 contributes a material share of company revenue.) 

7. Why lobbying mattered more than technical fixes alone

Technical programs can survive early stumbles, but the F-35’s political insulation came from the combination of (a) jobs spread across many congressional districts, (b) sustained lobbying and campaign flows that bought access and goodwill, (c) contractual structures that constrained the Pentagon’s ability to shift sustainment work, and (d) a message ecosystem (think tanks, ex-officials) that framed cuts as economically and strategically dangerous. That web made it politically far easier to keep funding than to kill or sharply restructure the program — even when that might have been the more cost-effective military option. GAO and watchdog reports repeatedly point to governance and accountability gaps that allowed the program to persist despite recurring performance warnings. 

8. Nuances and pushback: not all blame is on lobbying

It’s important to be precise. The F-35’s persistence is not proof of conspiratorial malfeasance; there are legitimate strategic reasons for investment in a fifth-generation, interoperable platform that many allies also wanted. Partner nation purchases spread costs and increase interoperability for coalition operations. Moreover, some service leaders and many pilots argued the airframe’s capabilities justify continued investment. Still, the lobbying and political engineering around jobs, contracts, and messaging materially reduced political appetite for hard corrective action (cancel, rebid, or radically restructure) when problems emerged. The program became effectively “too big to fail.” 

9. What watchdogs and reformers recommend

Auditors and critics recommend stronger acquisition oversight, greater competition for sustainment, clearer ownership of technical data, tighter Congressional scrutiny tied to independent cost-benefit analysis, and reforms to how industrial-base jobs are weighted in political decision-making. Those reforms aim to restore Pentagon leverage and make funding decisions more closely aligned with military need rather than political protection. The GAO and CRS have repeatedly suggested steps to increase accountability and transparency for the program. 

The F-35 story is a showcase of how industrial strategy and political lobbying can shape an entire weapons program’s lifecycle. Lockheed’s deliberate spreading of work across many states, heavy lobbying and political giving, acquisition-stage contracting choices, and a supportive policy ecosystem combined to keep the F-35 funded through delays and overruns. That didn’t create the jet’s technical challenges, but it did make the program politically resilient — and expensive. If policymakers want procurement decisions that track military need more closely, they’ll have to address the political levers (jobs geography, campaign money, contracting rules, and revolving-door networks) that shield programs from hard choices.