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 crucial materials.

Army officials told The Wall Street Journal that it had awarded long-term leases to mining and extraction companies Titan Mining Corporation, 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 up to data center construction, in exchange for computing power that it could use for its increasing number of AI-driven weapon systems. The critical minerals processing plants will be located 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 quickly 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 their plants in 2027 and producing the minerals by 2028.

"There is a ticking clock here," said Jeff Waksman, the Army's principal deputy assistant secretary for installations, energy and the environment. "We recognize that there is always a risk that China can cut us off from these minerals."

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," he said.

Many minerals mined in the U.S. are still shipped to China for processing, then returned to the U.S. Nearly all of the boron that is necessary in military products such as body armor, nuclear reactors and submarines is processed in China.

"There's not much point in having a mine and digging up the material and then sending it all offshore," said Bernard Rowe, a co-founder at Ioneer. Ioneer begins construction this year on its Nevada mine, which will supply the boron for processing on the Army base.

The Trump administration is in the midst of a governmentwide effort to spend many billions of dollars to establish a critical minerals supply chain free from China's control, an undertaking some experts expect will take at least a decade. There are few other alternatives: Many critical mineral exports remain difficult for American companies to acquire as China flexes its chokehold on the materials for geopolitical advantage. Even amid a trade detente with the U.S., China continues to use export and import controls and pricing manipulations to control global flows of critical minerals, say U.S. industry experts.

Army officials said they have so far received between $15 billion to $20 billion in private investment for building out critical infrastructure on bases, and expect to secure up to around $50 billion.

The base leases remove one of the most challenging barriers to new critical mineral projects, which is access to industrial sites that can accommodate often dirty and complex processes and have infrastructure such as energy and wastewater treatment, say experts.

Titan mines graphite, which is used in lithium-ion batteries, in New York, but has to ship it to Germany for processing and then ship it back to U.S. customers, said Chief Executive Rita Adiani.

The production of graphite typically requires the use of hydrochloric acid, a corrosive material that can end up in water sources. Performing that work on civilian land involves numerous oversight bodies and securing local and state permits, but moving the process to an Army base streamlines the regulatory process. Adiani said the new Army base plant, which will cost the company between $30 million and $50 million, must still go through environmental reviews.

"There are no shortcuts around that," Adiani said.

Mineral processing work is difficult to do near any population center because of water, air, and environmental pollution concerns, as well as workplace safety hazards, said John Spear, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Colorado School of Mines.

"We have to adhere to all of the same laws that these facilities would have to adhere to if they were on private land," Waksman said.

Write to Heather Somerville at heather.somerville@wsj.com and Marcus Weisgerber at marcus.weisgerber@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 25, 2026 15:34 ET (19:34 GMT)

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