Analysis from West Point warns that strait of Hormuz blockade will strangle US defense industry

Closing the Strait of Hormuz poses a “crippling, real-time challenge” for a possible increase in production at the US defense industrial base and even the repair of defense equipment damaged by Iranian attacks. analysis published By West Point’s Modern Warfare Institute.

In particular, sulfur, a vital input in the extraction of critical minerals including copper and cobalt, has caused an “almost complete” disruption of maritime trade through the straits, which accounts for half of the world’s total shipments, and prices increased by almost 25% The report stated that there has been an increase of 165% on an annual basis since the war began.

These minerals, used in everything from microprocessors to jet engines to drone batteries, “determine how quickly things can be built and scaled under the pressure of an ongoing war,” according to the analysis, and the effects of a sudden supply shock on U.S. defense readiness have never been modeled.

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One of the authors of that analysis, USAF lieutenant colonel and US Naval War College non-resident Jahara “Franky” Matisek, told the Guardian in a phone interview that this is a “cascading problem” and raises the possibility that the “secondary effect of this war could be two or more than twice the cost of replacing all these weapons, because all the mineral demand will go up.”

Matisek also warned of another possibility: “The markets will not be able to provide enough minerals to replace all these radars that are destroyed and all this munitions that need to be replaced. It’s a really risky situation to be in right now.”

Sulfur used as industrial and agricultural input is mostly created as a spin-off refining of crude oil. Middle East Produces approximately 24% of the world’s supplyApproximately half of the world’s maritime trade passes through the Strait of Hormuz.

Sulfur is an input in the production of artificial fertilizer and international organizations, industry organizations And media reports I drew attention Potential downstream impacts on agriculture and food supplies, particularly in low-income countries where farmers need to buy from the same markets as their counterparts in rich countries.

But sulfur is also burned to produce sulfuric acid, the world’s most produced industrial chemical. Used to extract copper and cobalt from low-grade ores.

And the Institute of Modern War warns that these metals are vital to the replacement and repair of US military equipment used or damaged in the current war in the Middle East, pointing out that “copper is a special strategic material embedded in the transformers, motors and communications equipment that keep bases running and defense factories running.”

Authors offer specific estimates for materials damaged in the first days of the war“More than thirty thousand kilograms of copper will be required to replace two major US radars destroyed in Bahrain and Qatar,” he writes, and “thousands of additional kilograms of copper will be required to repair or replace other damaged US communications equipment, sensors, and radars in Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.”

They add: “The current sulfur shock is becoming a copper problem, and this copper problem risks quickly turning into a readiness and resilience problem.”

They call this the “pre-logistics crisis”, with earlier views being “background noise of military planning”.

According to a separate February analysisAlso co-authored by Matisek, only 6% of U.S. defense contractors have fully transparent supply chains. In the new report, he and his co-authors write that this has resulted in a military effort now constrained by “upstream conditions it could not control and the U.S. joint force’s discovery that its combat endurance was constrained by the invisible industrial bases needed to replenish itself.”

Matisek told the Guardian this was partly due to dependence on large defense contractors and the lack of transparency of supply chains to military planners.

“All the major defense industrial base companies are all privateers. They don’t want anyone to know how much minerals they’re buying to make missiles,” he said.

“From a strategic standpoint or a great power competition perspective, we actually can’t let them do this any longer because we really need to know about this,” Matisek added.

“We don’t know who their vendors are,” he said, and beyond a few steps in long chains of subcontractors, “nobody actually knows who’s supplying these metals, minerals, parts. And it all becomes a maze.”

He added that sulfur, as well as copper, is an important component in explosives in the business line of U.S. military activities.

“There are only two companies producing energy and producing high explosives. If they have not received any orders or requests to increase their production, that is quite problematic, especially when we come to the sulfur crisis here.”

He added: “But [there is] It’s kind of like a crunch for all these minerals that you actually have to spin to do all this.

The Guardian has reached out to the US Department of Defense for comment.