An Israeli cargo airline made multiple flights through John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York carrying thousands of pounds of parts for some of the most destructive conventional bombs in the American arsenal, according to open-source shipping data obtained by the Movement Research Unit and reviewed by The Intercept. The shipments moved during the height of the Israeli-U.S. war against Iran, raising new questions about how civilian airports in the United States function as logistics links in active military supply chains.

What Was Shipped and Who Shipped It

Challenge Airlines, an Israeli cargo carrier, made three flights this spring carrying bomb casings for BLU-109s, a 2,000-pound munition commonly called a bunker-buster. The same weapon has been tied to mass-casualty strikes on civilian neighborhoods in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran. The Movement Research Unit, an investigative outlet whose prior work has uncovered drone technology transfers to Israel, obtained the open-source data. The Intercept verified all three bunker-buster shipments and independently confirmed a portion of additional data showing over 100 shipments of JDAM guidance kits on the same airline.

JDAM, or joint direct attack munition, is a kit that converts an unguided bomb into a GPS-steered weapon capable of hitting a designated point on the ground. Many of the kits identified in the data were marked for use on the MK-84, another 2,000-pound bomb. Fragments of JDAMs have been documented at airstrike sites inside Gaza. Neither Challenge Airlines nor the Israeli military responded to requests for comment from The Intercept.

What a 2,000-Pound Bomb Does in a City

Josh Paul, a former State Department official who resigned at the outset of the war in Gaza to protest the Biden administration’s weapons sales to Israel, offered specific historical context for the weapons involved. During the entire counter-ISIS campaign in Mosul, only two 2,000-pound bombs were dropped anywhere near that city, Paul said, because American military planners concluded the weapons cannot be used with discrimination in an urban setting.

“There is no way to use a 2,000-pound bomb discriminately in an urban environment,” Paul told The Intercept.

Israel applied no such restraint. The country used BLU-109s and MK-84s extensively in Gaza and Lebanon. A New York Times analysis found that a strike on Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp, which killed dozens of civilians, involved these munitions. Paul assessed the overall pattern of their use directly: “If you look at a picture of Gaza right now, I would say Israel’s use of these weapons is functionally indistinguishable from indiscriminate bombing.”

JFK as a Military Logistics Hub

The November 2026 findings from The Intercept build on earlier reporting about the same airport and the same airline. A May 2025 investigation found 14 tons of nitrocellulose, an explosive compound, moving through JFK bound for Israel on Challenge Airlines flights. Mondoweiss, drawing on internal shipping records shared by the Palestinian Youth Movement, documented at least six separate arms shipments from JFK to Israel between July 2 and July 23, 2025, covering a wider range of components.

Those shipments, as documented by Mondoweiss, included aircraft structural parts and missile launcher struts from Lockheed Martin, fuel selector valves used in Elbit Systems aircraft, ammunition link containers for Israel Military Industries, a BRU-68 bomb ejector unit designed for use with F-35 fighters, and wingtip protective lenses for fighter jets. One shipment, a 347-kilogram crate from Lockheed Martin containing a BRU-68 bomb release unit that allows an F-35 to drop 2,000-pound bombs, departed JFK on July 16, 2025, and landed at Nevatim Air Base in southern Israel, where the Israeli Air Force’s F-35I fleet is based.

Challenge Airlines flight ICL982 departs JFK for Tel Aviv on what Mondoweiss describes as a near-routine schedule. Cargo workers interviewed by Mondoweiss described an environment where military shipments are handled with minimal explanation. “Most of us just scan the cargo tags, we’re not told what’s inside,” one JFK cargo worker told Mondoweiss on condition of anonymity. “When pallets show up wrapped and labeled ‘confidential’ or ‘secret,’ we know not to ask questions. They bypass normal screening. We just load them.”

The Port Authority’s Position

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates JFK, stated that it works with airport partners to ensure safety but placed responsibility for cargo decisions elsewhere. “The federal government and commercial airlines have primary responsibility as to what is allowed to be shipped on aircraft,” a Port Authority spokesperson told The Intercept. “We are pre-empted under federal law from interfering with these activities.”

That legal framework means no local authority has the power to block or even inspect federally approved military cargo moving through a civilian airport. The Port Authority’s statement confirms the arrangement without contesting it.

The Broader Financial Picture

The shipments through JFK take place within a larger military financing structure that is now under political pressure. Under a 10-year memorandum of understanding signed during the Obama administration, Israel receives $3.3 billion annually in U.S. Foreign Military Financing to purchase American-made equipment, plus $500 million for missile defense cooperation. That agreement expires in 2028.

A State Department letter sent to the office of Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas, obtained by the Wall Street Journal, revealed that Israel has placed orders for American weapons that exceed existing aid commitments by approximately $10 billion, based on figures from April 1 of this year. “Even if the MOU ran its full course to 2028, there’s still $10 billion above and beyond that, and there’s an issue of who’s going to pay for that,” Castro told the Journal.

Among the major purchases included in those outstanding orders is a roughly $3 billion agreement Israel’s Defense Ministry signed in June 2024 for 25 additional F-35 stealth fighter jets, with deliveries scheduled to begin in 2028. President Trump announced on November 3, 2026, that the U.S. intends to end military assistance to Israel by the end of the year, a move the Wall Street Journal reported surprised senior Israeli officials. Trump said on Fox and Friends that the idea originated with Netanyahu, who has previously discussed tapering American aid over time.

Ending annual assistance would not automatically cancel existing weapons contracts, according to the State Department letter. The outstanding orders could still be financed through future U.S. military assistance, Israeli national funds, or a combination of both.

A Supply Chain in Public View

What the Movement Research Unit data, the Mondoweiss shipping records, and The Intercept’s earlier reporting collectively show is a weapons supply chain operating through the country’s busiest international cargo airport, documented through commercial flight tracking, waybills, and publicly available shipping manifests. The parts are labeled as aircraft components or hazardous materials on cargo manifests. They move on a carrier whose scheduled departure times are publicly listed. The legal authority to approve the shipments rests with the federal government, not the city or state where the airport sits.

Whether Trump’s announced end to military aid will affect the specific contracts under which these parts are ordered, or the flights that carry them through New York, remains an open question. The $10 billion gap between existing orders and available financing suggests the pipeline has its own momentum, independent of any single policy announcement.

This article draws on reporting from The Intercept, Mondoweiss, The Jerusalem Post, and NBC News.

Want to go deeper? Ask NEX, the Decrypted Matrix research assistant, about the documents behind this story. It indexes every article here the day it is published and cites its sources.