Before Waging War, Check Your Supply Chains

Small Wars Journal | Dr. John Ringquist

The United States military has depleted over 45 percent of its Precision Strike Missiles and half of its Patriot and THAAD interceptors during the 2026 war against Iran. This rapid expenditure of advanced munitions restricts strategic options in the Pacific and delays weapons deliveries to NATO allies. Replacing these sophisticated systems is severely hindered by domestic industrial bottlenecks and a lack of manufacturing depth.

Munitions depth remains a critical vulnerability. Compounding this crisis, China has weaponised its global mineral dominance by restricting exports of dual-use military metals like tungsten, antimony, and rare earth elements. Through aggressive economic warfare and strategic acquisitions, such as securing Ecuador's copper deposits in April 2026, Beijing actively disrupts Western defense supply chains. Consequently, the Pentagon faces severe challenges in sustaining high-intensity operations, forcing allies like Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain to wait years for promised air defense interceptors.

Comment

The depletion of over 150 THAAD interceptors in the Persian Gulf exposes the acute vulnerability of Western high-tech defence manufacturing when decoupled from raw material security. Lockheed Martin aims to scale interceptor production to 400 units annually. However, this target remains hostage to specialised sub-tier supply chains. The production cycle of the AN/TPY-2 targeting radar, for instance, relies on high-performance magnets processed almost exclusively within Chinese industrial ecosystems. Expanding these assembly lines cannot resolve the underlying structural deficit while foundational chemical processing of rare earths remains concentrated in Chinese state-owned enterprises.

This bottleneck is codified by Beijing's export controls on antimony and tungsten, which directly restrict metallurgical inputs required for solid rocket motors. The REEShore Act of 2022 attempts to mandate domestic sourcing, yet the United States lacks the operational refining infrastructure to bypass Chinese processing monopolies. Without domestic chemical separation facilities, Pentagon contractors like Lockheed Martin remain structurally incapable of translating emergency congressional funding into rapid, end-to-end THAAD and Patriot replenishment.

Strategic Question for Discussion

If the REEShore Act of 2022 continues to restrict Chinese mineral imports, does the lack of domestic chemical separation facilities cause the Western defence industrial base to break down during high-intensity munitions replenishment cycles, or can recycling and scrap bridge the gap?

The available evidence indicates that recycling and scrap are structurally insufficient to meet the sheer volume of high-purity metals required for advanced guidance systems and rocket motors. My assessment is that without rapid, state-subsidised scaling of domestic chemical separation plants, the import bans mandated by the REEShore Act of 2022 will inevitably force a choice between violating statutory sourcing requirements or accepting prolonged production halts for critical interceptors like the Patriot and THAAD.

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