Pentagon Presses US Defense Contractors to Restrict Use of Key Supplies From China: Report

Earlier this month, the US Department of Defense “temporarily” stopped taking delivery of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jets after discovering that an alloy used in a key engine component is made in China.

The Pentagon is pushing US defense companies to limit the use of material from China in their global supply chains, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has quoted unnamed executive and military sources as saying.

The sources claimed that the US Department of Defense (DoD) has begun to use artificial intelligence to improve the way it analyzes whether aircraft parts, electronics and raw materials used by American military contractors originate in China or “other potential adversaries.”

According to the insiders, the US defense contractors, encouraged by the Pentagon, “are weaning themselves off” microelectronics and rare-earth minerals from China, despite a sizable proportion of them originating in the country.

The insiders stressed that both the DoD and industry leaders are seriously concerned over the US reliance on China for 80% of rare-earth elements, also known as technology minerals, which are used in magnets for weapons-guidance systems as well as commercial applications such as electric vehicle batteries.

The claims come after the Pentagon earlier in September stopped accepting F-35 combat jets made by Lockheed Martin Corp after being informed that they contained metal alloys produced in China and magnetized in the US.

The component in question is a magnet in the F-35’s turbomachine, which is made by the US corporation Honeywell. The turbomachine is a crucial aircraft component responsible for integrating the plane’s auxiliary power unit with an air cycle machine to provide electrical power for things like starting the engine and ground maintenance.

A DoD spokesperson confirmed to Bloomberg that the DoD had “temporarily paused the acceptance of new F-35 aircraft to ensure the F-35 program’s compliance” with regulations “pertaining to specialty metals.”

The spokesperson assured that the pause in production won’t affect the operations of F-35s already delivered to the US military or foreign countries because “the magnet does not transmit information or harm the integrity of the aircraft,” and because “there are no performance, quality, safety or security risks associated with this issue.”

The developments unfold as US media warned earlier this year that China’s control of nearly 90 percent of the world’s supply of rare earth metals poses a major threat to the America’s military-industrial complex.

In a separate development this month, Beijing imposed sanctions on a pair of US defense giants in response to US weapons sales to Taiwan, which is seen by China as a breakaway province that should be reunited with the mainland.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters that “to defend China’s sovereignty and security interests, the Chinese government has decided to sanction Gregory J. Hayes, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Raytheon Technologies Corporation, and Theodore Colbert III., President and Chief Executive Officer of Boeing Defense, Space & Security, who were involved in the latest arms sale” to Taipei.