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These Are The U.S. Weapons Most At Risk In The Looming Rare Earths Supply Crisis
A Special Competitive Studies Project assessment identifies US weapon-production exposure to Chinese supplies of critical minerals, using Exiger data covering almost nine million parts and 3,000 weapon systems. More than 28,000 unique components across approximately 1,400 systems contain antimony, gallium, germanium or tungsten, materials used in electronics, optics and specialised hardware. Virginia-class submarines are among the platforms highlighted, with more than 300 component identifiers dependent on these four minerals, including 190 involving germanium. The findings concern manufacturing and sustainment vulnerabilities from constrained material availability, alongside bottlenecks in casting, forging and extrusion capacity.