"The U.S. Department of Defense asked mining companies to submit proposals for projects that could mine, process, or recycle 13 critical minerals used in semiconductors, weapons systems, and advanced defense technologies. The request, issued through the Defense Industrial Base Consortium on the eve of coordinated U.S.-Israeli military strikes against Iran, marks an escalation in Washington's campaign to rebuild domestic mineral supply chains under active wartime conditions."
A Request With Strategic Timing
The U.S. military asked mining companies last Friday to help boost domestic supplies of 13 critical minerals used to make semiconductors, weapons, and other strategic products, according to a document reviewed by Reuters. The request was made the day before the United States and Israel launched coordinated military strikes against Iran, though there was no immediate indication whether the timing was intentionally coordinated to coincide with the start of the strikes.
The Pentagon sent the request to members of the Defense Industrial Base Consortium, a network of more than 1,500 companies, universities, and other entities that supply the military. Respondents were asked to submit proposals by March 20 for projects that could mine, process, or recycle select minerals, with potential development funding ranging from $100 million to more than $500 million per project. The Pentagon asked for detailed information on the costs, including labor and materials, needed to build a mine or processing facility.
The 13 minerals on the list are arsenic, bismuth, gadolinium, germanium, graphite, hafnium, nickel, samarium, tungsten, vanadium, ytterbium, yttrium, and zirconium. The document did not specify why only those 13 were chosen. But the composition of the list reveals a clear strategic logic: these are materials with direct applications in weapons systems, aerospace propulsion, semiconductor manufacturing, and advanced electronics, and for which the United States is substantially or entirely dependent on foreign supply.
What the List Reveals About Defense Priorities
Four of the 13 minerals are rare earth elements: yttrium, samarium, gadolinium, and ytterbium. Their inclusion signals that the Pentagon's rare earth concerns extend well beyond the neodymium and praseodymium that dominate public discussion of the permanent magnet supply chain.
Yttrium has emerged as a particularly acute concern for the aerospace industry. The element is used in thermal barrier coatings that allow jet engines and gas turbines to operate at extreme temperatures. Without regular application of these coatings, engines cannot be used. Yttrium shortages have set off alarm bells throughout the aerospace sector, as China controls the majority of global production and has subjected the element to export restrictions since April 2025.
Samarium is essential to samarium-cobalt permanent magnets, which are preferred over neodymium-iron-boron magnets in high-temperature defense environments such as missile guidance systems and military-grade motors. Gadolinium serves critical functions in nuclear reactor control systems and neutron radiography, while ytterbium has applications in high-power lasers and fiber optic communications used in defense networks.
The non-rare-earth minerals on the list are equally telling. Tungsten is irreplaceable in armor-piercing ammunition and steel-hardening applications, and China is the world's dominant producer. Hafnium is essential for nuclear reactor control rods and high-temperature aerospace components. Germanium is critical to infrared optics, fiber optics, and semiconductor substrates. Graphite serves as the standard anode material for lithium-ion batteries that power an expanding range of military systems. Nickel, vanadium, bismuth, arsenic, and zirconium each serve specialized defense and industrial functions for which substitution is difficult or impossible without significant performance degradation.
The China Dependency Problem
The strategic vulnerability that the Pentagon's request is designed to address is straightforward: the United States is reliant on imports for most of the 13 minerals, and China is the dominant global producer or processor of nearly all of them.
Several minerals on the list, including germanium, graphite, and yttrium, have already been subjected to Chinese export restrictions. Beijing imposed licensing requirements on germanium exports in August 2023, extended controls to graphite in October 2023, restricted seven rare earth elements including yttrium and samarium in April 2025, and expanded those controls with extraterritorial provisions in October 2025. A partial suspension of some controls was negotiated in November 2025, lasting through November 2026, but the April 2025 rare earth restrictions remain fully in force.
China's willingness to leverage its mineral dominance as a tool of strategic competition has been demonstrated repeatedly over the past two years. The pattern of escalating export controls, from licensing requirements to outright bans to extraterritorial provisions covering products made with Chinese-origin materials, has established the legal infrastructure for systematic supply disruption rather than one-off tactical maneuvers.
Nickel presents a different but related supply risk. Indonesia is the world's top global producer, and Jakarta has been throttling exports of the metal used widely in stainless steel and battery production. The convergence of Chinese export controls and Indonesian resource nationalism leaves the United States exposed on multiple fronts simultaneously.
Industry Response and Early Movers
The defense industrial base has begun positioning for the procurement opportunity. Colorado-based Energy Fuels, a DIBC member that operates the White Mesa Mill in Utah, said it is developing facilities to process gadolinium and samarium by 2027 and is considering processing yttrium. The company has already achieved commercial-scale rare earth separation, with its Phase 1 circuits producing individual neodymium and praseodymium oxides, and announced in late 2025 that its dysprosium oxide had passed qualification standards set by a leading South Korean automaker at 99.9 percent purity.
Energy Fuels CEO Mark Chalmers stated that, "the domestic supply of critical minerals remains essential to safeguarding both national security and economic stability," a framing that reflects the growing convergence of defense procurement and commercial critical mineral strategy.
The tungsten supply chain presents one of the clearest opportunities for non-Chinese capacity development. Almonty Industries' Sangdong mine in South Korea, historically one of the world's largest and highest-grade tungsten deposits, is expected to supply a significant share of global non-China tungsten production upon reaching full capacity. Fireweed Metals' Mactung project in the Northwest Territories holds the world's largest high-grade tungsten deposit. Both projects are strategically positioned to serve the defense procurement pipeline that the DIBC request is designed to catalyze.
The Broader Mobilization
The DIBC request does not exist in isolation. It is the latest in a series of accelerating federal actions to secure critical mineral supply chains that have intensified dramatically since the beginning of 2026.
On February 2, President Trump announced Project Vault, a public-private partnership backed by a $10 billion loan from the Export-Import Bank of the United States and approximately $2 billion in private capital to create a strategic reserve covering all 60 minerals on the USGS critical minerals list. Two days later, at the 2026 Critical Minerals Ministerial, Secretary of State Marco Rubio launched the Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement, or FORGE, a successor to the Minerals Security Partnership that aims to build a preferential trading zone for critical minerals with enforceable price floors across more than 50 allied nations. The United States signed eleven new bilateral critical minerals frameworks at the ministerial, adding to ten signed in the preceding five months.
The administration has also taken direct equity stakes in critical mineral companies, including MP Materials (the $400 million defense investment announced in mid-2025), Lithium Americas, and copper-and-cobalt developer Trilogy Metals. Separately, on the same day the DIBC request became public, the Defense Logistics Agency issued a request for information from miners on potentially acquiring lithium, chromium, and tellurium for military stockpiles.
The cumulative scale is substantial. Over the past six months, the U.S. government has announced more than $30 billion in direct funding commitments related to critical minerals, encompassing equity investments, loan guarantees, stockpile purchases, and project development funding. The velocity of commitment is without precedent in the post-Cold War era.
The Iran Context
The coincidence of the DIBC mineral request with the onset of military operations against Iran, whether intentionally coordinated or not, has sharpened the connection between critical mineral policy and active defense readiness.
Military operations consume critical minerals at rates that peacetime planning often underestimates. Precision-guided munitions depend on tungsten, germanium, and rare earth elements for their guidance systems, warheads, and electronic components. The jet engines powering strike aircraft require yttrium-based thermal barrier coatings that must be regularly reapplied. Radar and electronic warfare systems consume germanium, gallium, and other specialty materials. Every component of the modern kill chain, from satellite communications to the explosives themselves, incorporates materials on or adjacent to the Pentagon's 13-mineral list.
The Iran strikes have reportedly put additional pressure on U.S. munitions inventories, a concern that the White House is addressing through organized talks with major defense contractors. In this environment, the Pentagon's mineral request reads less as routine procurement planning and more as a recognition that wartime resource mobilization requires a domestic industrial base that does not currently exist at the scale required.
Financial markets have already responded to the intersection of military action and mineral security concerns. Shares of USA Rare Earth, a U.S.-based rare earth miner that received $1.6 billion in federal investment in January 2026, surged more than 10 percent in the first trading session following the weekend strikes, as investors priced in the heightened relevance of domestic mineral production to active defense operations.
Outlook
The March 20 proposal deadline will test whether the U.S. mining and processing industry can respond to defense procurement signals with actionable project proposals on a compressed timeline. The funding range of $100 million to $500 million per project is large enough to advance significant mining, processing, or recycling operations, but the underlying challenge remains: building physical mineral supply chains takes years, not months, and the minerals on the Pentagon's list include some of the most concentrated and difficult-to-source materials in the periodic table.
The DIBC request represents a structural shift in how the Department of Defense approaches critical mineral supply. Rather than purchasing finished products from global markets and assuming that supply chains will function when needed, the Pentagon is now actively soliciting proposals to build the upstream production capacity that would make domestic supply possible. This is industrial policy in its most direct form, driven not by trade theory or climate objectives but by the operational requirements of a military that is actively engaged in combat operations and recognizing, in real time, the fragility of its material supply lines.
The question is whether the political will and capital commitment can be sustained through the multi-year timelines that mine development and processing facility construction demand. The Pentagon has identified the vulnerability. The funding is available. The March 20 deadline will reveal whether the private sector is prepared to build what the Department of Defense has concluded it cannot afford to lack.