![]() However, with change comes opportunity – and a select few lucky countries are sitting on proverbial gold mines of so-called ‘ critical minerals’ that they hope will make them winners of the same natural resource lottery in which petrostates like the UAE have basked since the dawn of the ‘Age of Oil’. The discovery of vast reserves of oil beneath that unforgiving desert has transformed the lives of its inhabitants. The reason for this remarkable economic metamorphosis: black gold. Lifestyles were largely geared at enduring the hardships of the desert.īut all that was to change in the second half of the 20th century, and today cities like Dubai and Abu Dhabi rise proudly out of the desert as glittering glass and metal symbols of modernity, with the UAE boasting the world’s fifth-largest gross domestic product per capita (just pipping the Swiss). Education and healthcare were basic, reliant on local teachers and traditional healers. Communities were close-knit and dependent on strong tribal ties. Its subsistence economy was based on fishing, pearling and nomadic herding. Credit: Freedom_wanted via Shutterstock.īefore the 1960s, life in the Middle Eastern region now known as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) would have looked very much like it had for many hundreds of years. Micaela Burrow is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.Lithium fields in the Atacama desert in Chile. Army) /d2uuLsoERzĪs of Tuesday, the Biden administration committed more than $40.5 billion in security assistance for Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in February 2024, including close to $17.1 billion in weapons directly contracted from industry, according to the State Department. We were awarded a 2-year contract by valued at $23.8M to continue providing propulsion for the Javelin missile. manufacturer that produces ball bearings meeting DOD standards for withstanding rapid temperature shifts experienced in weapons systems.ĭi Stasio said the Pentagon is looking for a company that can become a second supplier, according to Defense News. Then came a $13.8 million grant to The Timken Company for ball bearing production, according to Defense News. “So we sent out a signal to industry that we wanted to expand production of high-priority aluminum in the United States.” “There has to be pretty high purity, otherwise bad things happen, like it could crack,” Di Stasio told the outlet. Russia controls roughly three quarters of the world’s high-priority aluminum needed for jets and some military vehicles. On June 16, the office awarded $45.5 million to an Iowa company for producing high-priority aluminum, Defense News reported. The plants at those locations manufacture Javelins, Stingers, and the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) that the U.S. ![]() defense industrial base lacks the capacity for a major war as China continues to invest in munitions and weapons systems six times faster than the U.S.ĭOD’s Office of Manufacturing Capability Expansion and Investment Prioritization, which manages DPA contracts, handed out $215.6 million to Aerojet Rocketdyne to expand and modernize its facilities in Alabama, Arkansas and Virginia in April, according to a press release. ![]() Tanks, armored vehicles and armored planes all require cobalt, he added.Ī January report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found the U.S. So if we want to shoot through anything hard, we need cobalt.” “What most people don’t know is every hard-target penetrator that we use in the military is a tungsten-cobalt alloy. “A lot of cobalt was getting refined in either China or the Ukraine, or some place that it can’t be refined anymore,” Anthony Di Stasio, director of the Pentagon’s investment office, told Defense News. The award, announced June 15, directs Jervois Mining USA to scope out its Idaho mine for a mineral that, despite its critical application in batteries and other technologies, is dominated by Chinese-owned mining companies, according to Defense News. ![]() The Department of Defense (DOD) handed out the first contract from the $600 million fund Congress included the May 2022 package set aside for arming Ukraine in April, and in June used the funds to authorize cobalt exploration in Idaho. ![]() industrial base’s dependence on China and Russia for critical minerals and expand production capabilities, the outlet reported. Pentagon planners hope the contracts awarded through Defense Production Act (DPA) authority will help break the U.S. The Biden administration has begun using funds from a $40 billion Ukraine aid package Congress passed in 2022 to rebuild American manufacturing capacity and restock weapons and scope out critical mineral mining possibilities in Idaho, according to Defense News. ![]()
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