Washington – In air force fighters, rare mineral magnets that are extracted or processed in China are required to turn on engines and provide emergency energy. In precision -guided ballistic missiles, preferred by the army, rare magnets from China make the rear fins spin, allowing the missiles to go to small or moving targets. And in new electrical and drum drones that are being adapted by the Marines, rare land magnets are irreplaceable in compact electric motors.
China’s decision to retaliate US President Donald Trump’s increase in rates, ordering restrictions on exports to a wide range of critical minerals and magnets, is a warning to US national security, industry and defense experts said.
Announcing that special export licenses will now require six heavy rare land metalswhich are fully refined in China, as well as rare land magnets90% of which are produced in China, Beijing remembered the Pentagon – if, in fact, he needed to be remembered – that a wide range of American weapons depends on China.
“This decision is extremely significant for our national security,” said Gracelin Baskaran, director of the critical mineral security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Beijing began with what an Air Force officer called “a warning” to signal the more damage to inflict if he wished. And left enough room to scale the situation. Beijing could also go from licensing restrictions to impose tariffs, quotas or even a total ban.
The rare lands are a group of 17 elements, including neodymium, jetry, scandio and discretionwhich are difficult to separate into usable forms. In fact, they are not rare, but they can be tough to extract from Earthand the mining and refining process to make them usable entails substantial environmental costs.
They are present in almost all forms of American defense technology. They can form very powerful magnets for use in fighters, war ships, missiles, tanks and lasers. Itrian is necessary for high temperature jet jet engines; It allows the thermal barrier coatings on turbine blades to prevent aircraft engines from melting during the flight.
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According to the Defense Department, each F-35 hunt contains about 400 pounds of rare materials. Some submarines need more than 4 tons of these materials.
The entire American defense industry, aerospace and weaponry companies have small rare land stocks. Enough, they say defense industry analysts, to meet the needs for just a few months. The Pentagon has inventory of some rare lands, but these reserves are not enough to support defense companies indefinitely, one officer said.
“China mines and refines most of the rare lands in the world and dominates the supply chain,” said Aaron Jerome, a Lipmann Walton and Co. merchant, a metal trade company based in Britain.
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This dominance of the supply chain allows Beijing to influence how much weapons will cost that depends on the rare lands, giving it a huge power over America’s industrial defense base.
Jerome pointed to what he called “the disaster of the F-35 magnet.” In 2022, the Pentagon temporarily interrupted Lockheed Martin’s F-35 deliveries after the manufacturer acknowledged that a league in China was in a Stealth fighter component, violating federal defense acquisition rules.
At the time, the Pentagon said that a magnet containing the league used in part of the integrated energy package was no safety problem. But a month later, the Pentagon allowed deliveries to continue while looking for another source for the magnets. Wherever the magnets are coming now, some component of it is controlled by Beijing’s dominance over the supply chain, Jerome said.
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With Beijing now demanding that their rare land exporters receive first express permission from the government before sending the material to the United States, American defense companies can see prices shoot Soon, industry experts said.
Until the 1980s, the United States were a leader in rare land production through the Mountain Pass Mine in California. But in 2002, Mountain Pass was closed, with China dominating the market. Mountain Pass is now the property of MP Materials and is operating again, but is not close to Chinese production, industry experts said.
The Association of Aerospace Industries, which represents defense contractors, again requested two years ago that the United States would reinforce its mineral supply chain to ensure better access to the industry.
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“US global aerospace and defense leadership depends on a safe and resilient supply chain – particularly for critical minerals used in the production of state aircraft technology,” said Eric Fanning, president of the organization at the time.
China has already demonstrated its power on the rare land supply chain in the past. In 2010, Beijing interrupted the rare land trade with Japan after the arrest of a Chinese fishing captain. The Chinese measure caught the attention of the United States, alerting them to the threat represented by China’s control over the mineral supply chain.
In 2017, during his first term, Trump signed an executive order designed to increase US domestic production, and President Joe Biden followed the example during his administration, allocating even more money for rare land extraction and refining facilities.
The Pentagon has been increasing its stock since the 2010 episode involving Japan, and “we have more than one inventory of what we had 15 years ago,” said Dan Blumenthal, senior member of the American Enterprise Institute. But, he added, “it won’t last enough time.” American defense companies, he said, “must be very concerned.”
There are precedents for the United States to find alternatives to crucial elements and minerals during the war. In World War II, German submarines sank many allied cargo ships carrying Bauxite from Suriname. “We may have potentially lost the war if we had no alternative sources of Bauxite,” said Seth G. Jones, author of the next book “The American Edge: The Military Tech Nexus and the Source Power Power Dominance.”
The United States resorted to Arkansas and built a large bauxite stock used to build aircraft from local mines.
This article was originally published in The New York Times.
