A single supply-chain chokepoint now links the Pentagon’s most sophisticated weapons to a foreign power, with no domestic backup. According to a 2021 Pentagon report, 100 percent of U.S. rare earth magnet production capacity is located in China.
That total dependence means the advanced permanent magnets essential to the F-35 Lightning II fighter jet, precision-guided missiles, and radar arrays currently cannot be manufactured on American soil. The Department of Defense has classified rare earths as critical to national security, and the strategic picture is clear: a disruption in supply from China would cascade across multiple weapons platforms simultaneously. Rare earths are a group of seventeen metallic elements prized for their unique magnetic and conductive properties.
Despite the name, they are not scarce in the Earth’s crust — cerium, for example, is more abundant than copper — but they rarely occur in concentrated deposits, making extraction and refinement difficult and costly. The first rare-earth mineral, gadolinite, was identified in Sweden in 1787, and the elements derived their names from the Swedish village of Ytterby, where many were discovered.
Commercial mining expanded in the mid-20th century as demand grew for color televisions, lasers, and advanced alloys. By the 1970s and 1980s, scientists developed high-strength permanent magnets from rare-earth alloys, notably neodymium and samarium–cobalt. These magnets produce magnetic fields far stronger than traditional types, enabling compact yet powerful electric motors in military systems and consumer electronics alike.
Their brittleness and susceptibility to corrosion led engineers to coat them in nickel, zinc, or epoxy to preserve performance.
The Weapons at Risk
The U.S. military adopted rare-earth magnets in guidance systems, radar, and communications during the late Cold War, integrating them into precision weapons and aircraft that require reliable, high-field permanent magnets. Today, the F-35 Lightning II, precision-guided missiles, and radar arrays all depend on neodymium-iron-boron magnets. Without these materials, the magnetic fields that drive electric motors in aircraft and ship systems simply cannot function.
The broader stakes extend beyond magnets: the military also relies on rare earths for laser systems, sonar arrays, and communication equipment. A supply disruption would ripple across the force, grounding advanced jets, degrading missile accuracy, and silencing radar networks.
Over decades, the United States ceded most processing and magnet manufacturing to China, which now dominates the entire supply chain — from mining to finished components. Domestic reserves exist, but environmental concerns, regulatory hurdles, and lower labor costs abroad shifted production overseas. The result is a strategic vulnerability that Beijing could exploit in a crisis, creating a supply-chain choke point at the heart of American military dominance.
Rebuilding Domestic Capacity
The Pentagon has not been idle. In 2022, the department awarded a $30.6 million contract to MP Materials to establish a domestic magnet manufacturing facility.
That move is part of a larger effort to rebuild a production base that has atrophied over decades. The Defense Logistics Agency, for its part, maintains a stockpile of rare earth materials. As of 2023, that stockpile was valued at $1.2 billion.
But stockpiles are finite; they are a buffer, not a solution. The MP Materials contract is a down payment on changing the reality that the weapons defining American military dominance — the F-35, missile guidance systems, naval electric drives — all require rare earth magnets that currently cannot be made at home.
Restoring domestic capacity is not merely industrial policy; it is a strategic imperative to reduce exposure to potential supply disruptions in a tense geopolitical environment. Building a fully integrated supply chain from mining to magnet production takes years. On the geopolitical chessboard, this is a vulnerability that adversaries have already mapped. The question now is whether the United States can close the gap before the calculus shifts in someone else’s favor.
