Samm Gillard & Drew Ronneberg
It’s tough medicine but Congress must use the pending defense policy bill to bar the Department of War from using lithium-ion cells in its weapon systems that are supplied by Beijing.
When China temporarily halted the supply of lithium-ion battery cells to Pentagon drone maker Skydio last year, co-founder and CEO Adam Bry called it “a clarifying moment.”
“If there was ever any doubt, this action makes clear that the Chinese government will use supply chains as a weapon to advance their interests over ours,” he remarked at the time.
The company was forced to take the “drastic step” of rationing batteries from three to one per drone, while it is still searching for alternative suppliers.
Yet this unique vulnerability is far greater than many realize or are willing to admit. Countless other specialized U.S. military systems, including handheld radios, autonomous submersibles, and next generation platforms like directed energy weapons, rely on lithium-ion batteries and related materials.
As the Department of Defense warned in its landmark Lithium Battery Strategy, it is similarly dependent on a variety of Chinese battery components and materials like graphite anodes, electrolyte salts, as well as other key ingredients such as the metals nickel and cobalt.
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