Rare Earth Elements & their essential application in the production of critical military components is a vulnerable subject for even the most powerful nations worldwide. The rare earth elements find their use in manufacturing of multitude of weapon systems and the disproportion in the supply chain of these minerals has been a source of malady for most of the nations.

Chinese dominance in production & consumption of the earth rare minerals has distorted the domestic supply chain in many countries. China has effectively imposed a monopoly on export of the REE (Rare Earth Elements) by using strategies like cut off in sales to targeted countries, threatening export ban & controlling the production process.

Up to 1980, USA continued to be the largest producer of the REEs, until China realised the potential of REEs in manufacturing arena, especially in defense components. China leveraged on their abundant deposits & escalated the production of REE finished products to a level that 90% of demand worldwide is dependent on China today. China emerged as a leader in production of permanent magnets that are critically needed for wind turbines, electric motors, aircraft manufacturing and many more.

Rare Earth Elements & Military Applications:

Rare Earth Elements comprise a group of 17 elements that find critical applications in production of a number of defense components and other products related to computers & communication sector, which again, is also greatly linked to military field. These are termed as “rare” not because they are necessarily rare, but because they are not found in needed concentration to enable an economic mining.

In military applications, all these 17 REEs play crucial roles in manufacturing of below components:

• Night Vision Googles
• Precision Guided Missiles
• GPS Tech Device
• Nuclear Batteries
• Light alloys in aerospace products in defense, especially to produce fighter jets.
• Camera Lenses & Catalysts
• High Strength materials in aircraft, Lasers
• Electric Motors
• Sonar Systems for Submarines
• Superconductors
• EV Vehicle
• Air defense system
• Mission critical defense & space applications

It can be scary for any country that is dependent on a nation like China for the REEs carrying immense importance to manufacture above-shown military products, critical to national security. China can switch off the tap & have all the fun by weakening the assembly line in defense industry of the rival nations.

It is crucial to understand at this moment that China holds 37.9 % of the planet’s overall reserve of REEs & yet takes least regard for environmental impacts, producing over 60% of REE finished products globally.

Currently, countries with their own reserves of rare earth elements & refraining from mining it on account of environmental considerations probably will have no other way in future, but to rethink their decisions. Otherwise, world will witness again, a situation, like US-China trade sanctions in 2019, wherein, in response to the USA restriction on supplying chip making tools to China, China threatened to suspend supply of rare earth elements to USA. USA went into a melee for policy revival towards rare-earth mining & stockpiling, only to realise the trade war with China over rare earth minerals is near to impossible and thankfully, China decided not to suspend the supply for obvious reasons.

Once a leading manufacturer & processor of rare earths, USA has now turned into a condition, wherein, USA mines 50000 Tons of rare earths & send to China for processing it, due to absence of any processing ability. It is simply not viable at present in USA to mine, process rare earth to match the Chinese scale in the rare earth market. Despite Trump efforts to revive the rare earth mining & processing capability in USA which was further supplemented by Biden Administration, the results on ground are a far cry.

Japan has consistently taken steps to reduce its dependence on China, reducing it from 80% in 2010 to 50% in 2018. In 2010, in a mid-sea incident between a Chinese fishing boat & Japanese coast guard, Japan arrested the Chinese fishermen. China responded by stopping export of rare earth materials to Japan.  Japanese automobile industry was in a sense of urgency after this export restriction from China. Japan created separate investment to mitigate over-dependence on China for rare earths, develop alternate technologies, recycling rare earths, develop rare earth mine of own and stockpiling of rare earth. Recently Japan has decided to mine rare earth minerals from mud in deep sea in an area off Minami-Torishima Island, nearly 1900 KM from Tokyo.

India sits on 6.9 Million Tons of rare earth deposits, but mined only 2900 Tons in 2022. Production of more than that is a distant reality considering the tedious process of granting mining leases, environmental safety concerns, restrictions on account of forest & uncontrolled in-habitation etc.

Australia has a significant deposit of 4.2 Million Tons of rare earths & mined only 18000 Tons in 2022. Australia must boost production of rare earths in compliance with environmental safety and reduce their reliance on China.

Despite nominal, but inspiring, success seen with Japan reducing their dependence on China, for rare earths, China is still the syndicate of rare earth supply chain. It will require a combined international approach to turn the table.

The QUAD & AUKUS Solution to Chinese Grip on Rare Earth Trading:

The members of QUAD (Australia, India, Japan, USA) & AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom & United States), must collaborate and conduct an analysis on their combined reserve of rare earth and support each other’s rare-earth needs, especially in the defense, automobile, telecom sectors.

USA, India, Japan, Australia, United Kingdom together constitutes a large, combined reserve of rare earth elements and must work on effective mining & processing of the minerals. A Collective approach only can rescue the world from the stranglehold of Chinese Rare Earth monopoly & get rid of unsustainable Chinese source of procurement.