The US Army has leased land at four military bases for use in rare earth mineral processing—helping to combat Chinese dominance in these fields.

The United States Army has awarded contracts to four mining and mineral extraction companies this month to develop new processing facilities for critical minerals. The awards were made under the US Army’s recent Request for Proposal (RFP) No. DACA27-1-26-204, and by the service’s newly launched Strategic Capital Initiatives (SCI) program.

The new effort comes as part of a larger effort within the Department of Defense (DoD) to increase the American supply chain and reduce reliance on China for the key resources that are widely used in the production of weapon platforms, batteries, and other emerging technologies.

“This is proving the Secretary of the Army’s theory that we can operate in a different way that benefits both the Army and industry—as well as gets the Army the things that it needs critically on a timeline that would have been unthinkable 18 months ago,” David Fitzgerald, Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Under Secretary of the Army, said, according to an Army media release. “We are very excited about the effort, and the engagement and support we’ve gotten from industry.”

The United States Army is providing a long-term Enhanced Use Lease (EUL) on what is described as underutilized military land. Crucially, the contract is not a land sale: the United States will retain ownership of the land at all four sites. However, the private party lessees will bear the costs of the operations, including the construction and decommissioning.

A Canadian Mining Company Is Breaking China’s Graphite Dominance

Empire State Mines, a US-based subsidiary of the Canada-based Titan Mining, will develop graphite processing capacity at two US sites, including a 245-acre parcel at Pine Bluff Arsenal, Arkansas, expected to serve as the primary location, and a 97-acre parcel at Anniston Army Depot, Alabama.

The company received the proposed leases for up to 50 years, during which time it will finance, design, build, operate, and then decommission the facilities.

If all goes well, these efforts will lead to the first commercial graphite purification facility sited on a US Army base—the first step in ending the United States’ total reliance on foreign-controlled graphite supply chains, historically dominated by China.

“For the first time in American history, a critical minerals processing facility will be built on US defense soil, and Titan Mining is the company making it happen,” said Rita Adiani, president and CEO of Titan Mining. “These awards mark a turning point in ending America’s dependence on Chinese-controlled supply chains, and Titan is honored to lead the re-shoring initiative of critical minerals, which are essential to our national security.”

Rare Earth Metal Processing Soon to Be Underway in Utah

Euclid, Ohio-based REalloys was also conditionally selected to develop a heavy rare earth processing facility at the Tooele Army Depot in Utah. Under a long-term EUL, the company will also design, finance, build, and operate the facility, which will refine dysprosium (Dy) and terbium (Tb), two rare earth metals.

Each mineral has been deemed essential to national use, and according to the company, they are used in the defense industry for high-temperature magnets that are used in the production of electric motors, sonar systems, and precision-guided munitions.

“We believe selection by the US Army for a processing facility on American soil is a powerful validation of REalloys’ mine-to-magnet strategy and of the urgent national need for domestic heavy rare earth capability,” said Leonard Sternheim, CEO of REalloys. “Dysprosium and terbium are the heart of the high-temperature magnets that keep our most advanced defense systems running, and today, almost all of that processing happens overseas.”

In addition, the Ioneer USA Corporation of Reno, Nevada, will handle the mineral processing facility at the Tooele Army Depot, refining boron into defense-grade materials such as boron carbide, which is a key component for ballistic armor and other military shielding.

“Boron is foundational to modern military power and force protection—and producing it on American soil strengthens our industrial base while reducing our over-reliance on foreign sources,” said Bernard Rowe, managing director and CEO of Ioneer. “We look forward to advancing this partnership in direct support of the Joint Force and the warfighters who depend on these materials every day.”

A Texas-Based Company Is Building Domestic Lithium Capacity

The Austin-based Energy Exploration Technologies (EnergyX) was contracted to build a lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cathode active material manufacturing facility near the Red River Army Depot in Texas. It could become the first large domestic LFP cathode production facility.

Battery-grade lithium is critical for the delivery of sustained, high-output power that is required in tactical vehicles, drones, night vision goggles, and even aircraft.

As with other rare earth minerals, the United States heavily relies on China as a source of lithium. However, although lithium is cumbersome to refine, the base metal can be found nearly everywhere, making it possible to construct alternative supply chains.

All Three US Army Projects Are Critical to the National Defense

This new initiative has been a long time coming. For decades, the United States Department of Defense and the federal government ignored the fragility of the rare earth supply chains, even as the minerals were increasingly used in the production of modern devices. This allowed China to secure a near-monopoly on global mining and refining.

Over the past 40 years, lower-cost Chinese supplies and lax environmental regulation have also caused the US domestic rare earth infrastructure to atrophy. This vulnerability to defense supply chains has also been seen for years, but actual efforts to address the threat have been stymied.

“The Army is taking this seriously. Using military land to bypass the permitting process is smart supply chain design, and it creates a real foundation for domestic processing capacity,” Brandon Daniels, CEO of AI supply chain startup Exiger, told The National Interest. “The materials being processed at Tooele, dysprosium and terbium, are already on China’s export control list.”

However, there are still some issues that should be a concern. Full production at the Toole facility won’t begin until 2028 at the earliest, and those are still pending conditional agreements.

“The Pentagon’s procurement ban on Chinese materials kicks in January 2027, and the partial truce on broader export restrictions expires in November 2026,” Daniels said. “The defense industry still needs to continue to do the hard work of quantifying its own demand and identifying its exposure at the material level, actually to support these domestic capabilities.”

Still, this should be seen as an important step in the right direction.

“The US Army is securing a rare earth metals pipeline in order not to be critically dependent on Chinese supplies,” explained technology analyst Roger Entner, founder of Recon Analytics.

Entner told The National Interest that this problem had been repeatedly ignored, but in the past five years the Pentagon had gotten a much-needed wake-up call.

“It is the practical lesson that has been learned from the Russian invasion in Ukraine, where Europe was in a difficult position because they were energy dependent on Russia,” Entner said. “The US is taking the right steps to end its critical dependency on Chinese materials.”

Data Is the Oil of the 21st Century—China Is Acting Accordingly

It will remain extremely important that the United States becomes more self-reliant throughout the entire supply chain, of which the rare earth minerals are a critical link.

“Munitions production is ramping to levels we have not seen in decades, and guidance systems, motors, and radar in that production run all have rare earth content,” Daniels said. “The refining and processing dependency is where we are most exposed. A single nation controls over 90 percent of global rare earth refining capacity and nearly 99 percent of heavy rare earth processing.”

China’s dominance was built deliberately over decades, and Washington was very much a willing partner. Now progress is being made to undo this trend, but it won’t come quickly or easily. The United States will need to do more to ensure that it isn’t locked out of the critical rare earth minerals, which are the foundational pillars of 21st-century technology. These could be as important now as oil was in the 20th century, or iron was in antiquity.

“Real progress is being made. Domestic investments are being stood up, global partnership agreements are coming together with Australia and allied nations, and initiatives like the Army announcement show the government putting real assets behind the problem,” Daniels said. “But there is still significant work to do across the defense industry to quantify actual demand at the specification level and identify program-by-program exposure. That is what connects these investments to actual warfighter capability.” 

About the Author: Peter Suciu

Peter Suciu has contributed to dozens of newspapers, magazines and websites over a 30-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a contributing writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. He is based in Michigan. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org.

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