F-35 at 25 Percent; Lutnick's ASML Call Unsubstantiated

The Allegation Without Evidence

Washington's technology-denial architecture against China, the interlocking export controls designed to cut Beijing off from the machines and materials that make advanced chips, rested as of June 19 on an allegation it could not substantiate. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who leads the Bureau of Industry and Security (the US Commerce Department's export-control enforcement arm), called ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet on June 19 to relay Washington's belief that a banned EUV lithography machine has reached China. EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography systems are the only tools capable of producing frontier semiconductors below 7 nanometers, and without access to them China cannot build the chips that underpin modern weapons guidance and military AI at scale, a constraint every allied government and chipmaker that depends on those controls to check Chinese military modernisation has accepted as real. ASML denied the allegation and said it tracks all machines. No public evidence was disclosed.

The ban has been in place since 2019, when the Dutch government declined to renew ASML's export license under US pressure. ASML tracks every unit shipped. If the tracking failed, seven years of export-control architecture collapsed on the most consequential restricted item on the list, and every ally that accepted Washington's assurances about supply-chain integrity would need to reconsider what it actually stopped. If the tracking is intact, Lutnick's call applied diplomatic pressure on a bilateral Washington needs for the broader semiconductor-control coalition without disclosing a basis for the claim. Lutnick's call is dated June 19. The Bureau of Industry and Security has not published the evidence it used.

Fleet at 25 Percent

The F-35, at 25% full mission-capable, cannot meet the air-superiority requirement in any Taiwan contingency the Pentagon models. The Government Accountability Office (GAO, Congress's independent audit arm) confirmed the rate in a June 2026 report, also finding it has fallen from 38% in fiscal year 2021. Full mission-capable means combat-ready on a given day. At the current rate, three in four aircraft are grounded or degraded when ordered, a shortfall that limits what the United States can actually put in the air in any Taiwan contingency. 7 billion through 2031.

Beijing has been moving the other variable. The PLA Navy (China's People's Liberation Army Navy) commissioned Dongguan (Type 055, hull 109) and Anqing (Type 055, hull 110) in March 2026 and assigned both to the Eastern Theater Command, the PLA formation designated for Taiwan contingency operations. That command ran four joint combat readiness patrols around Taiwan in May 2026 alone: May 1, 6, 19, and 25. Research vessel Xiang Yang Hong 22, escorted by China Coast Guard ships, surveyed waters east of Taiwan June 16-18. AEI (the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank that maintains an open-source China-Taiwan military tracker) assessed the mission gathered submarine navigation data near strategic chokepoints, information with direct consequences for any nation that depends on those sea lanes staying open.

Australia delivered Corvo fixed-wing surveillance drones and Oceanbotics underwater systems to the Philippine Coast Guard in June under a 2024 maritime cooperation agreement. For the Philippines, whose fishing fleets and coastal communities sit in disputed waters, Australia's delivery means an allied partner is watching sea approaches Philippine forces cannot fully cover alone. Australia's Corvo drones cover sea approaches the Philippine Coast Guard cannot. The F-35 that would fly above them is grounded three days in four.