U.S. News: Army Is Leasing Land on Bases For Critical Mineral Production

“The U.S. Army is leasing land on bases across the country to companies that will build and operate critical mineral processing plants, military officials said Thursday, the latest push by the Trump administration to establish a domestic supply chain of the materials.

 

Army officials told The Wall Street Journal it had awarded long-term leases to mining and extraction companies Titan Mining Corp., EnergyX, Ioneer and REalloys for processing and refining critical minerals that are essential to American defense, but the production of which China dominates. The agreements, which are preliminary, are intended to give the Army direct access to minerals needed in everything from drones to body armor.

 

In lieu of cash payments from the companies, the Army will get some percentage of the processed mineral output, officials said. Collectively, the companies are expected to invest about $2 billion on the projects, Army officials said.

 

"The main objective here really is to make the American and allied supply chain for these critical minerals more robust and more resilient," David Fitzgerald, the deputy undersecretary of the Army, said in an interview.

 

The military has been seeking ways to make better use of its 15 million acres of property, including opening them to data-center construction, in exchange for computing power that it could use for AI-driven weapon systems.

 

The critical minerals processing plants will be on Army depots that are already heavy industrial sites.

 

The companies will be responsible for the design, building and operations of the processing plants, the companies said. Titan Mining will refine graphite at a base in either Alabama or Arkansas; EnergyX is slated to begin processing lithium at the Red River Army Depot in Texas; and Ioneer will refine boron, used in everything from fiberglass to nuclear reactors, while REalloy will process rare earth elements, both at a military hub in Utah.

 

EnergyX has already acquired more than 50,000 acres of mineral rights for lithium deposits near the Red River Army Depot on the border between Texas and Arkansas. The Army recently announced the base would be used to manufacture and test small drones. Lithium is a critical component of batteries needed to power drones.

 

"It's a pretty cool situation, because the lithium that can go into those batteries can come from right underneath the ground in which they stand," said Teague Egan, the founder and CEO of EnergyX.

 

The companies are expected to start building plants as early as 2027 and producing the minerals by 2028.

 

China controls around 90% of the processing of many rare-earth elements and graphite, around 70% of lithium-ion battery production and at least 80% of the boron compounds the world needs, according to the companies.

 

The economics of processing and refining critical minerals often present a hurdle to building new facilities, said Alvin Camba, a researcher and lead scientist at defense-technology company Lyvi.

 

The margins are so low and the startup costs for these plants, without government subsidies, are so high that they often don't make financial sense.

 

 "The reason it works in China is because it is the global industrial superpower," Camba said.” [1]

 

1. U.S. News: Army Is Leasing Land on Bases For Critical Mineral Production. Somerville, Heather; Weisgerber, Marcus.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 26 June 2026: A3.