Changing Military Assets and their increasing NdPr Demands

[John]

https://rareearthexchanges.com/news/the-shift-to-unmanned-military-assets-a-rare-earth-demand-surge/

I posted the above article mainly to discuss how the military's demand for NdPr will grow massively over the next 10 years.

Here is a summarised table:

The Shift to Unmanned Military Assets – NdPr Demand Surge:​

Category	Legacy Platform	Unmanned Equivalent	NdPr Usage (Est.)	Demand Multiplier
Air	F-35 Lightning II (~417 kg REEs)	- MQ-9 Reaper Drone (10–15 kg NdPr each) - XQ-58 Valkyrie - Swarm Drones (2–5 kg each, x100s units)	Moderate per unit, high cumulative	3–5x increase
Land	M1 Abrams Tank (<10 kg NdPr)	- Ripsaw M5, Marker UGV (50–100 kg each) - Combat Robots (5–20 kg each) - Drone Carriers	High NdPr per unit × higher volume	5–7x increase
Sea	Arleigh Burke Destroyer (~2,500 kg REEs)	- LUSV, XLUUV (250–500 kg per unit) - Small underwater drones (10–50 kg each)	Smaller per unit, but higher fleet numbers	2–4x increase

As you can see, there will be somewhere between a 3-5x increase in NdPr just for the change in military assets. And when you also think that there could be a 186x increase for general use robots....the US Military really neeeds to be planning ahead to secure their rare earths including NdPr.

Conclusions:​

• Defense strategy is shifting from large, crewed assets to swarms of unmanned systems.
• This transition is dramatically increasing total NdPr demand across all domains.
• Air, land, and sea platforms are all moving toward electric propulsion, actuators, and sensors powered by NdFeB magnets.
• With the 2027 supply chain mandate, Western nations must scale up NdPr production and magnet manufacturing outside China.

What do others think?

What will Europe do? They have to increase their military spending by a massive amount.....where will they source their NdPr?

 

[bneimark]

Dear John, all,

Thank you for this really fascinating analysis. I am trying to get a better handle on the estimations for REE volumes in military hardware (mainly NdFeB and SmCo magnets), and so your post above and related article are quite helpful. However, can you provide some further links or references to these calculations (e,g., F-35 Lightning II (~417 kg REEs)), etc.

I am writing an scientific academic article on military rare earth magnet supply chains and conducting some carbon and environmental Life Cycle-Assessments and I am searching for more information on DoD volume demand for REE.

There is also this quote: 'The U.S. military currently consumes on the order of 3,000–4,000 tons of rare earth magnets each year...' from this great post: https://rareearthexchanges.com/rare-earth-elements-in-defense-technology/
It would be super if anyone had some further references on these volumes as it is very important to be as precise as possible in my analysis.

Thank you in advance,

Ben Neimark

https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sbm/staff/academic/profiles/neimarkb.html