As I understand the current situation from this forum and other sources:
1) China has an overwhelming grip on the mining, refining, processing, technology, and expertise for rare earth metals
2) The United States and allies face a multi-tiered supply chain crisis which requires expanding mining capacity, (re)inventing technologies and developing processes, actually building new machinery, constructing and staffing refining and processing facilities while building expertise, and due to an overwhelming cost advantage for China this whole endeavor needs extensive government support. This complex problem requires a combination of cash, competent policy and facility management, exemptions from regular permitting and environmental policies which would grind this process to a crawl, and a fair bit of genius to the technical problems. And if any part of that fails the whole endeavor for domestic/allied production is pointless.
3) Although a small part of dollar value rare earth metals are a critical element of the functionality of many modern technologies such that an absence makes the product stop working.
4) The nature of war games on US-China shows that side with more long-range precision guided missiles and planes wins. Missile ammo being the key factor.
5) Apparently ALL of our missiles and planes REQUIRE rare earth metals to function at all.
Suppose the US and China enter a multi-year attritional war or a decades-long arms race with mutual embargo of strategic materials. In this scenario production capacity for weapons is decisive over all other factors.
Suppose as a simplifying assumption demand for rare earths rises by a factor of 10 in a war. With China supplying 90% of the market the supply of materials drops by a factor of 10. After stockpiles are depleted (which could be fast after a demand surge) is my understanding correct that a combined supply shock with demand surge means we could an extreme supply/demand mismatch with inelastic supply? In terms of ramping up supply the multi-layered supply chain issues mean with extreme optimism it takes something like 4 years. Probably it takes 10 years and only with serious effort. Pessimistically (and maybe more realistically with our government's track record of delays and budget overruns) it takes 15-20 years to approach Chinese capabilities. So that for production US-coalition has to either try to work with severely reduced production or redesign all the weapons systems to use different materials.
In the context of an production-based attritional war or arms race, the conclusion(?) to take away from this that China has an overwhelming defense-industrial advantage for missile production and the magnitude of the advantage is so large (a factor of 10-100)(?) to make any quality or tactical differences meaningless. This seems to be a similar situation to how the oil advantage in WW2. The Axis armies were unable to function properly due to an acute oil shortage. Except the rare-earth situation seems even more lop-sided than WW2 oil.
So my question: Is there a major flaw in this understanding? Is it hyperbolic or accurate assessment to claim China's rare earth advantage towards weapons production in competive conditions is an overwhelming?
1) China has an overwhelming grip on the mining, refining, processing, technology, and expertise for rare earth metals
2) The United States and allies face a multi-tiered supply chain crisis which requires expanding mining capacity, (re)inventing technologies and developing processes, actually building new machinery, constructing and staffing refining and processing facilities while building expertise, and due to an overwhelming cost advantage for China this whole endeavor needs extensive government support. This complex problem requires a combination of cash, competent policy and facility management, exemptions from regular permitting and environmental policies which would grind this process to a crawl, and a fair bit of genius to the technical problems. And if any part of that fails the whole endeavor for domestic/allied production is pointless.
3) Although a small part of dollar value rare earth metals are a critical element of the functionality of many modern technologies such that an absence makes the product stop working.
4) The nature of war games on US-China shows that side with more long-range precision guided missiles and planes wins. Missile ammo being the key factor.
5) Apparently ALL of our missiles and planes REQUIRE rare earth metals to function at all.
Suppose the US and China enter a multi-year attritional war or a decades-long arms race with mutual embargo of strategic materials. In this scenario production capacity for weapons is decisive over all other factors.
Suppose as a simplifying assumption demand for rare earths rises by a factor of 10 in a war. With China supplying 90% of the market the supply of materials drops by a factor of 10. After stockpiles are depleted (which could be fast after a demand surge) is my understanding correct that a combined supply shock with demand surge means we could an extreme supply/demand mismatch with inelastic supply? In terms of ramping up supply the multi-layered supply chain issues mean with extreme optimism it takes something like 4 years. Probably it takes 10 years and only with serious effort. Pessimistically (and maybe more realistically with our government's track record of delays and budget overruns) it takes 15-20 years to approach Chinese capabilities. So that for production US-coalition has to either try to work with severely reduced production or redesign all the weapons systems to use different materials.
In the context of an production-based attritional war or arms race, the conclusion(?) to take away from this that China has an overwhelming defense-industrial advantage for missile production and the magnitude of the advantage is so large (a factor of 10-100)(?) to make any quality or tactical differences meaningless. This seems to be a similar situation to how the oil advantage in WW2. The Axis armies were unable to function properly due to an acute oil shortage. Except the rare-earth situation seems even more lop-sided than WW2 oil.
So my question: Is there a major flaw in this understanding? Is it hyperbolic or accurate assessment to claim China's rare earth advantage towards weapons production in competive conditions is an overwhelming?
