Highlights
- Boeing’s F-47 NGAD is America’s first sixth-generation fighter.
- The fighter features unprecedented stealth, speed, and AI-enabled combat capabilities.
- Its advanced technology heavily relies on rare earth elements.
- China controls over 70% of global extraction and processing of rare earth elements.
- The Pentagon is investing billions with MP Materials to develop a domestic rare earth supply chain.
- The goal is to reduce strategic vulnerability.
The U.S. Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (opens in a new tab) (NGAD) fighter – recently designated the Boeing F-47 (opens in a new tab) – is poised to be America’s first sixth-generation jet, a cutting-edge stealth aircraft designed to dominate the skies against peer adversaries. Yet this revolutionary warplane faces a down-to-earth challenge: a potential chokehold in its supply chain. The F-47 relies on several rare earth elements and other critical materials for its high-tech systems, and China’s grip on those resources – and its willingness to restrict exports – has raised alarm bells in Washington. This investigative report examines why the F-47 is so advanced, which contractors and components are involved, and how a shortage of rare earth elements could threaten the jet’s production and national security.
The F-47 NGAD: America’s Sixth-Generation Super-Fighter
The F-47 – winner of the Air Force’s NGAD competition – represents a “generational leap forward” in fighter design as reported in Defense News (opens in a new tab).
It is envisioned as a stealthy, high-performance aircraft that will eventually replace the F-22 Raptor as the Air Force’s premier air superiority fighter. In March 2025, the Pentagon awarded Boeing the engineering and manufacturing development contract for NGAD, valued at over $20 billion, after a heated competition (opens in a new tab) with Lockheed Martin. This victory was a major boost for Boeing’s defense business, giving the aerospace giant a marquee fighter program at a time when its legacy F/A-18 production was winding down.
Why is the F-47 so special? Officials describe it as the world’s first crewed sixth-generation fighter (opens in a new tab), bristling with advanced technology. It will employ “state-of-the-art stealth technologies” that make it “virtually unseeable” to enemy radar. The jet is expected to boast unprecedented speed, agility, and combat range – “there’s never been anything even close to it” in terms of power and maneuverability, according to President Donald Trump when announcing the contract. The F-47 is designed from the outset to team with autonomous drones (known as Collaborative Combat Aircraft, or CCA) acting as wingmen to extend its sensor reach and strike capabilities. It will also be built with open-systems architecture and cutting-edge sensors and weaponry to network with other aircraft and satellites, forming a “family of systems” for air dominance. In short, the F-47 aims to combine stealth, advanced propulsion, and AI-enabled teaming to ensure American air superiority well into the 21st century.
Under the hood, the F-47 will likely feature a next-generation adaptive engine – an advanced jet engine with variable-cycle technology for optimal efficiency and thrust across different flight regimes. (General Electric and Pratt & Whitney are currently competing to provide this NGAD engine per Defense News (opens in a new tab).
It will carry sophisticated avionics, radar, and electronic warfare systems to counter the most advanced threats. Boeing’s interim defense CEO, Steve Parker, noted that Boeing made “the most significant investment in the history of our defense business” to develop this jet and is ready to deliver “the most advanced and innovative NGAD aircraft” for the mission. As reported in Defense News, Air Force leaders like Gen. David Allvin have lauded the F-47 as “the most advanced, lethal and adaptable fighter ever developed,” saying it will “shape the future of warfare”. Allvin emphasized that while the F-22 Raptor is currently the world’s top air superiority fighter, the F-47 is a generational leap beyond it, with the maturity and technology to “dominate the future fight”.
However, delivering on that promise doesn’t depend only on design and engineering – it also depends on materials. Hidden beneath the F-47’s radar-evading skin and AI-powered combat systems are critical rare earth elements (REEs) that make those capabilities possible. And that’s where a strategic vulnerability lies: many of those elements are sourced from a supply chain that runs through China.
Rare Earth Ingredients: The F-47’s High-Tech Heart
Building a sixth-gen fighter requires exotic materials that can perform under extreme conditions. In the F-47’s case, several rare earth elements are indispensable for its components:
| REE(s) | Description |
| Neodymium (Nd) and Praseodymium (Pr) | Light rare earth elements key to the powerful neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) permanent magnets; used throughout modern aircraft. Nd-Fe-B magnets are found in electric motors, actuators, and generators on fighter jets – for example, in the F-47’s flight control actuators, integrated starter-generators, and likely in some weapon or sensor systems. Neodymium magnets are prized for being extremely strong and for retaining magnetism at high temperatures. Praseodymium is often alloyed with neodymium in these magnets to enhance performance. Without Nd-Pr magnets, critical systems – from the jet’s electrical pumps and actuators to certain sensor gimbals – would be far less efficient or powerful |
| Dysprosium (Dy) and Terbium (Tb) | These heavy rare earths are added in small amounts to high-performance magnets to improve their heat resistance. Terbium and dysprosium substitutions in NdFeB magnets enable them to maintain magnetic strength at the scorching temperatures reached in jet engines and high-power systems. For instance, terbium-doped magnets are used in “multiple key defense systems including aircraft, submarines, and missiles” because they remain stable under demanding conditions. Dysprosium, similarly, is critical for making magnets that work in the white-hot environment of a fighter’s engine bay or inside a missile in flight. In the F-47, heavy rare earths like Dy are likely present in actuators for missile fins and guidance systems, and in the jet’s own electromagnetic systems, ensuring they perform reliably during supersonic speeds and extreme maneuvers |
| Yttrium (Y) | Yttrium, a heavy, is vital for advanced avionics and optics. It’s used in radar and laser systems – for example, yttrium iron garnets (YIG) are used in radar microwave filters and tunable antennas, and neodymium-doped yttrium-aluminum-garnet (Nd:YAG) crystals are the basis of many military lasers. Yttrium also plays a role in high-temperature materials: it’s added to certain alloys and ceramic coatings to help jet engine turbine blades withstand heat. (The thermal barrier coatings lining an engine’s hottest sections often contain yttria, an oxide of yttrium.) In short, yttrium is found in radars, lasers, and as an additive in high-tech alloys – all directly applicable to a plane like the F-47, which will likely feature cutting-edge active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars and targeting lasers for its sensors and weapons |
| Others | The F-47 and its associated systems will use other critical materials too. Samarium (another rare earth) is used in certain stable magnet types (Sm-Co magnets) which might feature in some aerospace applications. Gallium (a tech metal, not a rare earth) is crucial for modern fighter radars and electronic warfare suites, since gallium nitride (GaN) and gallium arsenide semiconductors power high-frequency radar transmitters and receivers. Tantalum and tungsten (critical tech metals) go into high-temperature capacitors and penetrator rounds or engine parts. Titanium alloys (while not “rare” earths) are heavily used in the F-47’s airframe for strength and light weight. And exotic elements like hafnium and rhenium are used in advanced turbine blade alloys for heat resistance. In sum, a modern stealth jet is a flying periodic table – but rare earth elements form the irreplaceable core of many of its most advanced features |
To appreciate the scale of reliance: the F-35 fifth-gen fighter contains about 920 pounds of rare earth materials per plane as cited in The Cipher Brief (opens in a new tab). The F-47, with even more advanced systems, will likely be in the same ballpark. These materials appear in everything from the electrical actuators in its wings and missile bays to the laser targeting pods and night-vision sensors.. They give the F-47’s engine the magnets needed to start and generate power, its missiles the precision guidance, and its radar the ability to see far and accurately. In short, without rare earths, the F-47’s superlative capabilities would quite literally not take flight.
China’s Grip on the Rare Earth Supply Chain
If rare earth elements are the lifeblood of high-tech weapons, then China remains the heart pumping that blood. The People’s Republic of China dominates both the mining and refining of rare earths, controlling roughly 70% of global extraction and nearly 87% of processing. Between 2019 and 2022, the U.S. imported over 95% of its rare earths—most from China—leaving its defense systems, including the F-47 NGAD fighter, acutely vulnerable to foreign leverage. That leverage was put on full display in April 2025 when President Trump launched a broad trade war with Beijing (part of Liberation Day), prompting China to retaliate with tightened export quotas and a temporary halt of rare earth magnet exports.
The result: a substantial collapse in magnet exports that month, paused auto manufacturing in the West, and heightened anxiety among U.S. defense contractors. While Beijing did not formalize a broader export embargo, the message was clear—China sees rare earths as a strategic asset. The supply chain disruption highlighted a long-known risk: China has used mineral access as geopolitical leverage before, and the F-47, despite being America’s future air dominance weapon against China, is still dependent on materials processed in or controlled by Chinese state-linked entities.
Of course, just last week, the Department of Defense and MP Materials announced a major deal to accelerate magnet production at scale. The Pentagon will own 15% of MP. The timeline if all goes according to plan: 2028. A lot can go wrong in the next few years. The F-47 program’s rare earth reliance underscores a broader national security dilemma. With materials like neodymium, dysprosium, terbium, and yttrium essential for aircraft actuators, radars, and laser systems, a Chinese export freeze could stall production.
Again, the Mountain Pass mine in California, operated by MP Materials, remains the U.S.’s only active rare earth mine—but until recently, most of its output was shipped to China for refining. Although the Trump administration secured a breakthrough with China during spring 2025 negotiations—led by Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent (opens in a new tab) and others in London—it was only a non-binding framework to “continue doing business and negotiate.” It did not memorialize long-term access, and controls on dual-use technologies remain in place.
Securing the Supply: Pentagon’s Rare Earth Offensive
To confront this looming threat, the U.S. government and military have launched an aggressive effort to rebuild a domestic and allied rare earth supply chain. This represents a sea change in policy – after years of a market-driven approach, Washington is now directly subsidizing and investing in critical mineral production in ways not seen since the Cold War.
The cornerstone of this effort is a partnership with MP Materials, the company that operates the Mountain Pass rare earth mine in California– America’s only active rare earth mine. In July 2025, the Department of Defense inked a multibillion-dollar deal to become the largest shareholder in MP Materials, taking an effective 15% ownership stake in the firm as reported by this outlet. Through a $400 million investment (via a Defense Production Act allocation and the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital), DoD will infuse MP Materials with capital to greatly expand rare earth mining and magnet manufacturing in the U.S.. It’s an unprecedented move – as one watchdog noted, “buying stock in an individual company… at this scale, is a highly unusual if not unprecedented move for the Pentagon”. The deal underscores how far the U.S. is willing to go to secure these materials: essentially, the Pentagon is creating a domestic “national champion” in rare earths, explicitly to cut reliance on China as cited in major media such as the Washington Post.
As Rare Earth Exchanges (REEx) reported under this partnership, MP Materials will build a new U.S.-based rare earth magnet factory (dubbed project “10X”) that is slated to come online by 2028. The Pentagon has guaranteed that it will buy 100% of the output of this plant for the first 10 years, ensuring a stable demand. It also set a price floor of $110/kg for neodymium-praseodymium oxide (the key input for magnets) – roughly double the recent market price in China – to protect MP from Chinese price undercutting. In other words, DoD is using long-term offtake contracts and pricing guarantees to “share the risk” and give U.S. producers a buffer against China’s market manipulations. MP’s new magnet production, combined with its mine output, is expected to supply a significant portion of U.S. defense needs. Notably, as part of the deal MP Materials will also establish new processing circuits to produce heavy rare earths like dysprosium and terbium on U.S. soil by 2028, thanks to a $150 million DoD loan. Assuming all goes according to plan within a few years, this could potentially close a critical gap, since those heavy elements are currently almost exclusively refined in China. Achieving domestic production of Dy and Tb would remove the last major U.S. dependency on imported heavy rare earths for magnets.
The strategic rationale is clear. As MP CEO James Litinsky put it, the aim is to eliminate a “single point of failure” in the military-industrial base (opens in a new tab) by restoring the full rare earth supply chain inside the U.S.. “Recent events have underscored the urgency of this mission,” Litinsky said on a July investor call, referring to China’s export curbs. He noted that western buyers face a binary choice – “there’s the Chinese sphere of influence or there’s MP” – and the intent is for MP to stand up as a national champion that ensures the U.S. and allies have a secure source. The DoD’s equity stake and contracts, he said, give MP the “firepower to build this out” rapidly.
Beyond MPMaterials, the Pentagon has been funding other projects to diversify supply. Since 2020, DoD has poured at least $540 million into critical minerals projects ranging from rare earth separation facilities to battery mineral mining. For example, the U.S. has supported Australia’s Lynas Corp. in building a rare earth separation plant in Texas to handle heavy rare earth processing (though that project has faced delays). The Defense Logistics Agency is also stockpiling certain rare earth oxides and alloys in the National Defense Stockpile, though current stockpile levels would cover only a short-term disruption.
New policies and congressional mandates now restrict the use of Chinese-sourced rare earth products in many defense applications, forcing contractors to seek alternative sourcing or recycled materials wherever possible (gao.gov) (opens in a new tab). Research is ongoing to determine whether some rare earths can be recycled from end-of-life equipment or whether substitutes (even if inferior) can be found for critical uses, thereby buying time in an emergency.
All these efforts, however, take time – likely the better part of this decade – to bear fruit. The F-47 program is ramping up now. Boeing is slated to produce a handful of test aircraft in the next few years under the NGAD development contract. The Air Force hopes to start fielding the F-47 by the early 2030s. Bridging the gap between now and a secure supply chain is the challenge. This is why the Pentagon’s magnet deal goes into effect immediately: the DoD will start buying all of MP’s magnet output as soon as it’s produced, and in the meantime, it effectively subsidizes MP to triple output at an existing smaller magnet facility in Texas. The arrangement also hedges against various Chinese scenarios – if China were to flood the market to kill off competition, the DoD’s price floor shields MP; if China were to cut off exports entirely, the U.S. will have at least one domestic source ramping up. Still, as observers note, the U.S. is playing catch-up on an industry China spent 30 years building. Even with these investments, China will remain the dominant player in global rare earths for years, and the U.S. will likely still need to import some materials from allies (like Australia or perhaps emerging producers in Vietnam, Brazil, or Africa) to fully meet demand.
Confronting a Strategic Vulnerability
The F-47 NGAD fighter is often described in awe-struck terms – invisible on radar, blazing fast, bristling with AI and lasers, a triumph of American innovation. It is meant to guarantee U.S. air dominance in a contested future. Yet, as we have seen, this bleeding-edge weapon system has a supply chain Achilles’ heel. Small amounts of obscure metals – with names like dysprosium, terbium, and yttrium –could decide whether the F-47 soars or sits in a hangar. The overreliance on Chinese-controlled rare earth elements poses a direct threat to the program’s schedule and the broader rearmament effort. In a potential future crisis with China, the last thing the U.S. can afford is to have its next-gen fighters grounded by a mineral embargo.
Policymakers and military leaders are now urgently addressing this vulnerability. In effect, the Pentagon has declared that securing supply lines for rare earths is itself a matter of national security, worthy of multi-billion-dollar intervention. The recent DoD-MP Materials deal – with the Pentagon taking a 15% stake and backing a domestic supply chain from mine to magnet – is a bold attempt to rewrite the supply map. It signals that the U.S. is determined not to be held hostage by resource dependency if it can help it.
Still, REEx suggests time is not on the U.S. side and that the clock is ticking. Until alternative sources are fully online, the F-47 program managers must navigate a precarious tightrope: pushing the envelope of technology while praying the materials underpinning that technology remain available. The story of the F-47 and rare earths illustrates a broader lesson – in the 21st century, industrial base security is as important as battlefield military tech. As the U.S. rebuilds its rare earth infrastructure (still, we might add, without the needed comprehensive industrial policy), the F-47’s fate will serve as a high-profile test of whether America can innovate its way out of a supply chain trap that has been decades in the making. The race is on to ensure that the F-47 flies on American (or at least allied) minerals – and that the only thing stealthy about it is the jet itself, not the supply of parts needed to build it.
Sources:
- Rare Earth Exchanges content library
- GAO WatchBlog – Critical Materials High Demand & DOD Supply Chaingao.gov (opens in a new tab)gao.gov (opens in a new tab)
- Defense News – Boeing Wins Contract for NGAD Fighter (F-47)defensenews.com (opens in a new tab)defensenews.com (opens in a new tab)
- Defense News – F-47 NGAD Family of Systems & China Threatdefensenews.com (opens in a new tab)
- Defense News – Advanced Engines and Industry Basedefensenews.com (opens in a new tab)defensenews.com (opens in a new tab)
- Defense News – Gen. Allvin on F-47 Leap Over F-22defensenews.com (opens in a new tab)
- Breaking Defense – Boeing’s NGAD Win and Program Contextbreakingdefense.com (opens in a new tab)breakingdefense.com (opens in a new tab)
- The Cipher Brief – Rare Earths in Defense Systems (Walter Pincus)thecipherbrief.com (opens in a new tab)thecipherbrief.com (opens in a new tab)
- The Cipher Brief – Rare Earth Magnets in Weapons (Pincus)thecipherbrief.com (opens in a new tab)thecipherbrief.com (opens in a new tab)
- Cummins Inc. – Tech Metals Uses (Yttrium in Radars/Alloys)cummins.com (opens in a new tab)
- Reuters – China’s Export Curbs & Rare Earth Alarm (2025)reuters.com (opens in a new tab)reuters.com (opens in a new tab)
- Reuters– MP Materials Deal with DoD – 15% Stakereuters.com (opens in a new tab)reuters.com (opens in a new tab)
- Washington Technology – Pentagon’s 15% Stake in MP Materialswashingtontechnology.com (opens in a new tab)washingtontechnology.com (opens in a new tab)
- Washington Tech – MP Materials Magnet Plant & China Riskwashingtontechnology.com (opens in a new tab)washingtontechnology.com (opens in a new tab)
- SFA Oxford – DoD-MP rare earth deal shields F-47, F-35, B-21sfa-oxford.com (opens in a new tab)sfa-oxford.com (opens in a new tab)
- Reuters – Pentagon Investing in Critical Mineralsreuters.com (opens in a new tab)reuters.com (opens in a new tab)
- Washington Post – DoD Rare Earth Stake Rationalewashingtonpost.com (opens in a new tab)washingtonpost.com (opens in a new tab)
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