The nation also dominates the mining and mineral trade in developing countries that export large quantities of critical minerals. “China clearly has a comprehensive global strategy to corner the market on these materials and we’re behind and we’re playing catch-up.”Ĭhina has the world’s largest trove of titanium and exports a significant quantity of tungsten to the United States. “China in particular does a remarkably good job of hoarding these materials,” said Moulton. “The is no longer capable of covering the Department of Defense’s needs for the vast majority of identified materials in the event of a supply chain disruption.”įurthermore, China monopolizes much of the global rare earth mineral market, raising the prospect Beijing could cut off access to critical minerals in the event of a conflict with the United States. “While these drawdowns were appropriate when the Department of Defense mainly focused on counterterrorism, the current stockpile is inadequate to meet the requirements of great power competition,” the lawmakers wrote. “I don’t see any other reason for it.”īurchett was one of seven Republicans to sign onto Moulton’s letter to the defense appropriations subcommittee last month asking appropriators to provide an additional $264 million in funding for the stockpile for FY23. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., told Defense News. “It was just ignorance on our part that we allowed that to happen,” Rep. They have also included more than 2 million pounds of tantalum, used in electronics, as well as 26 million pounds of cobalt and 62,881 short tons of aluminum. These sell-offs have included 3,000 short tons of titanium, used in building military airframes, and 76 million pounds of tungsten ores and concentrates, used in military turbine engines and armor-piercing ammunition. “A lot of what happened is Congress just getting greedy and finding politically convenient ways to fund programs that they weren’t willing to raise revenue for,” said Moulton.
Lawmakers anticipate the stockpile will become insolvent by FY25. That value has plummeted to $888 million as of last year following decades of congressionally authorized sell-offs to private sector customers. The stockpile was valued at nearly $42 billion in today’s dollars at its peak during the beginning of the Cold War in 1952.
0 kommentar(er)
