The United States is widely regarded as the world’s pre-eminent military power. With an annual defense budget approaching USD 900 billion, Washington spends more on its armed forces than the next nine countries combined. It dominates global arms exports, accounting for nearly 44% of the world’s weapons market, and hosts the planet’s most powerful defense corporations, including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, RTX (Raytheon), Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics.
Yet beneath this image of overwhelming military superiority lies a strategic vulnerability so severe that it threatens to disrupt the production of America’s most advanced weapons. At the center of this crisis is samarium, a heavy rare-earth element essential to modern warfare—and a supply chain now overwhelmingly controlled by China.
The Metal Behind Modern Military Power
Samarium is a little-known element, but its military importance is immense. Its primary defense application lies in samarium-cobalt (SmCo) permanent magnets, which are capable of maintaining powerful magnetic fields under extreme heat, radiation, and mechanical stress. These properties make them indispensable for high-end defense systems.
SmCo magnets are used in F-35 fifth-generation stealth fighters, Tomahawk cruise missiles, satellite systems, radar arrays, guidance and control units, and space-based military platforms. Without these magnets, precision targeting, navigation, and reliable performance at high temperatures become impossible. In practical terms, modern US airpower, missile strike capability, and space-based military infrastructure cannot function without samarium.
An American Invention Lost to Globalization
Ironically, samarium-cobalt magnet technology was pioneered in the United States during the 1960s. Research conducted at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and institutions like the University of Dayton laid the foundation for these high-performance magnets. For years, the US and its European allies led the industry.
That leadership collapsed in the 1980s and 1990s as rare-earth processing shifted to China. The reasons were largely economic. Rare-earth refining is among the most environmentally damaging industrial processes, generating toxic waste and radioactive byproducts. Strict environmental regulations in the US and Europe, combined with higher labor costs, made domestic production expensive.
China offered the opposite: lax environmental oversight, cheap labor, and massive state subsidies. Western companies shut down one by one, unable to compete with artificially low Chinese prices. Entire industries in the US, France, and the UK disappeared, along with the technical expertise that supported them.
China’s Strategic Monopoly
Today, China mines roughly 60% of the world’s rare earths and processes nearly 90% of global rare-earth magnets. When it comes to samarium-cobalt magnets, Beijing controls nearly the entire supply chain—from mining and refining to magnet production.
This dominance is not accidental. For decades, China kept prices low to eliminate foreign competition, absorbing short-term losses to secure long-term strategic control. Once competitors vanished, Beijing gained the ability to weaponize supply chains.
That weaponization became clear in 2025, when China imposed export licensing requirements on samarium and other heavy rare-earth elements in response to US trade actions. While restrictions on some light and medium rare-earth products were later eased, controls on heavy rare-earth magnets remained firmly in place, directly impacting US defense contractors.
The French Factory Lifeline
Facing a sudden supply choke, US defense companies turned to an unlikely source: a decades-old samarium stockpile left behind at a bankrupt factory in France. The site, a relic of Europe’s abandoned rare-earth industry, contained processed samarium that could still be used for magnet production.
This forgotten cache has become a temporary lifeline for America’s defense sector, supplying critical materials for systems such as the F-35 and Tomahawk missiles. However, the solution is dangerously short-lived. Industry estimates suggest the stockpile can sustain production for only about one year.
Beyond that point, the US faces a severe shortage with no immediate alternatives.
No Quick Fix
Rebuilding samarium processing capacity in the US or Europe is not a simple task. It would require billions of dollars, years of construction, regulatory approvals, environmental mitigation, and the re-creation of lost technical expertise. Even under emergency conditions, meaningful domestic production would take a long time to come online.
This vulnerability has not gone unnoticed. In October, the US Geological Survey ranked samarium as the most supply-chain-vulnerable critical mineral in its proposed 2025 Critical Minerals List, citing severe risks to both the US economy and national security.
A Strategic Wake-Up Call
The samarium crisis exposes a deeper flaw in Western strategic thinking. While the US and its allies focused on cost efficiency and globalization, China focused on control. America invented the technology, but China captured the supply chain.
Today, the world’s most powerful military depends on an abandoned European factory’s leftovers to keep its advanced weapons operational. The lesson is stark: in modern warfare, dominance is no longer defined solely by firepower, but by control over the materials that make that firepower possible.
In the battle for the future of military technology, supply chains—not missiles—may decide who truly holds power.
