The rage of war has placed these military metals in high demand
Metals used in munitions and military technology are in the spotlight as war rages in the Middle East and Ukraine
Tungsten, tin, antimony, rare earths and beryllium among the key commodities to follow
These ASX stocks are moving to stake out a position in critical minerals markets
The rise of fresh tensions in the Middle East has put the spotlight on the minerals needed for military operations.
The wars in Ukraine and Gaza continue to rage, and even escalate, while the outbreak of hostilities between Israel and Iran is leading to fears of a much larger regional, or even global, conflict.
While the first few days of the conflict have boosted the price of oil, it's also a sad fact that military operations are metals intensive.
Even without an additional conflict, US President Donald Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' will see the country's defence spending hit US$1 trillion next year for the first time.
In a recent presentation in Toronto, Hallgarten + Company analyst Christopher Ecclestone noted that most of the combatants in World War I and, to a lesser extent, World War II, had all the metals and minerals they needed domestically – which is not the case today.
He also pointed out that war materials are exceedingly high-tech, both in composition and metal inputs, adding that rare earths 'weren't a thing' in WWII.
While loads of different metals, including aluminium and titanium, are needed for defence applications, Ecclestone listed the 'headline' military metals as tungsten, antimony, rare earths, tin and beryllium.
While there aren't any options on the ASX for beryllium, we have a look at some of the juniors with near-term production potential in the other four metals.
Tungsten
Vancouver-based investment firm Mission Critical Metals, of which Ecclestone is also CEO, describes tungsten as the key military metal, due to its use in making bulletproof vehicles, armoured tanks, armour-piercing rounds, high-speed cutting tools, and rocket and aircraft parts.
Mission says that given the turnaround in the tungsten price is relatively recent, the space is yet to attract many new players.
Outside of the ASX's two listed tungsten producers, Almonty Industries (ASX:AII) and EQ Resources (ASX:EQR), there are a couple of other hopefuls.
Tungsten Mining (ASX:TGN) is considering an early production pathway for its Hatches Creek project in the Northern Territory.
Last month, the company reported a maiden inferred resource of 12 million tonnes at 0.17% tungsten trioxide, which will feed into a scoping study.
Preliminary metallurgical studies have successfully produced a tungsten concentrate grading at 50% tungsten trioxide.
Meanwhile, Rumble Resources (ASX:RTR) discovered a tungsten sweetener at its Western Queen gold project in Western Australia last year.
High-grade tungsten mineralisation remains open in all directions with a maiden resource to be reported in the September quarter.
The company will then complete metallurgical testwork to determine the quantum of the tungsten revenue stream and incorporate it into the Western Queen South mining schedule.
Antimony
Antimony is used in military applications including fighter jets, military primers, night vision goggles, lasers, military detonators and military smoke agents.
There's been an explosion of ASX companies seeking exposure to antimony due to a price surge driven by shortages.
Larvotto Resources (ASX:LRV) is one of the more advanced companies globally, with its Hillgrove project in New South Wales due to start production next year.
Nearby, Trigg Minerals' (ASX:TMG) Achilles project contains the Wild Cattle Creek deposit, with a resource of 1.52Mt at 1.97% antimony containing 29,902 tonnes of antimony, which the company says makes it Australia's highest grade primary antimony resource.
Trigg also recently boosted it antimony portfolio with the addition of the Antimony Canyon project in Utah, which has a non-JORC resource of 12.7Mt at 0.79% antimony for 100,300t of contained antimony.
Felix Gold (ASX:FXG) could be in production the soonest from its Treasure Island project in Alaska.
The company is working towards small-scale antimony production by the end of this year from the Scrafford deposit, which previously produced up to 58% antimony.
Also in Alaska, Nova Minerals (ASX:NVA) has applied to the US Department of Defense (DoD) for funding to potentially fast track antimony production from its Stibium deposit.
Larvotto and Trigg have also reported tungsten resources, while Resolution's new project also has tungsten potential.
Rare Earths
Rare earths are essential to the defence sector, making the development of new supply chains a matter of national security for countries including the US.
Neodymium and praseodymium permanent magnets are used in F-35 fighter jets and unmanned aerial vehicles, while lanthanum is used in night vision goggles and terbium is used in naval sonar systems.
Shares in Dateline Resources (ASX:DTR) have exploded recently after Trump tweeted his support for the Colosseum rare earths project in California.
Last week, Dateline confirmed further public support from members of the Trump Administration, including Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum.
Locksley Resources (ASX:LKY) is a more recent entrant to the space, but its Mojave project in California sits right next to the US' only operating rare earths mine, MP Materials' Mountain Pass, and is also prospective for antimony.
This week, Locksley Resources launched strategic collaboration initiatives, targeting engagement with US agencies, national laboratories, US universities and downstream technology partners.
In Australia, Victory Metals (ASX:VTM) recently received a letter of interest from the Export-Import Bank of the United States for up to US$190 million in project financing for the development of the North Stanmore heavy rare earths project in WA.
The project is set to produce both heavy and light rare earths, as well as gallium and scandium as by-products.
VHM (ASX:VHM) is targeting rare earths and mineral sands production from its Goschen project in Victoria in late 2026 after receiving a mining license for the project recently.
The company is working towards a final investment decision in the December half.
Tin
According to the DoD, tin is used in many defence applications, such as soldering to enable electrical connections in semiconductors, high-end capacitors, and other electronic components in nearly all military hardware.
There's not a lot of tin exposure on the ASX outside of long-time producer Metals X (ASX:MLX).
Metals X-backed Elementos (ASX:ELT) could be next in line after releasing a definitive feasibility study for its Oropesa project in Spain in April.
The company is now working on permitting and financing ahead of a making a final investment decision.
Stellar Resources (ASX:SRZ) says its Heemskirk tin project in Tasmania has the potential to be a global top 10 producer.
A prefeasibility study is due in the second half of this year, with the company expected to move straight into a DFS.
Sky Metals (ASX:SKY) holds the advanced Tallebung project in NSW, a historical tin producer.
The company is advancing a bulk sample metallurgical program to optimise the process flowsheet and produce marketable tin concentrates ahead of offtake marketing.
Earlier stage explorers include Brazilian focused Australian Mines (ASX:AUZ) and Perpetual Resources (ASX:PEC), who are trying to find new deposit in a waning tin power which almost 40 years ago supplied 22% of the world's primary tin.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
ABC News
31 minutes ago
- ABC News
US and Iranian leaders trade threats over Iran-Israel conflict
US President Donald Trump is refusing to rule out American intervention in the Iran-Israel conflict. Iran's supreme leader has rejected Washington's demands for 'unconditional surrender'. Our correspondents in Washington and Tel Aviv, Lauren Day and Tim Swanston, provided this update.
West Australian
an hour ago
- West Australian
THE ECONOMIST: Inside the spy dossier that led Israel to war
When Israel launched its war on Iran on June 13 it did so on the basis of intelligence that it claimed showed Iran had reached a 'point of no return' in its quest for a nuclear weapon. That evidence galvanised Israel's own security establishment to support an attack now. It has been shown to America and other Western partners, presumably playing an important role in their ongoing decision-making over whether to support or even join the war. The Economist has not seen the material directly, but has gained exclusive insights from an authoritative source, giving a view of Israel's dossiers, as shared with its allies, and the claims they make over enriched uranium and the speeding-up of Iran's programme. Some of the details are already known; some are new. These claims are proving contentious, with the intelligence services of some Western countries cautious about the imminence of the Iranian threat, and signs of divisions within President Donald Trump's administration. Our report provides context on these disputes. We understand that the information presented by Israel includes a detailed account of a recent, more urgent, push by Iranian scientists towards 'weaponisation', or the creation of an explosive nuclear device. The dossier provides two key pieces of reported evidence for this claim. The first is that an Iranian scientific team has squirrelled away a quantity of nuclear material, of unclear enrichment status, that is unknown to the monitors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a UN watchdog (on June 9th the IAEA assessed Iran had official stockpiles of over 400kg of highly enriched uranium). The second piece of reported evidence is that the scientists have accelerated their work and were about to meet commanders of Iran's missile corps, apparently to prepare for the future 'mating' of a nuclear warhead with a missile. Much of Iran's previous dabbling with research and activity related to nuclear weapons was in the public domain already. The IAEA has published several reports documenting this, drawn in part from intelligence supplied by Israel and other countries. In 2018 a team at Harvard University also published their own analysis of Iranian documents purloined by Israel. Taken together, these sources described a broad and sustained Iranian effort towards making a uranium core for a bomb, the explosives required to implode that core in order to cause a chain reaction and a programme to place a spherical payload onto Iran's Shahab-3 ballistic missile. In a report published on May 31st, the IAEA noted that in 2003 Iran had planned to conduct what the Institute for Science and International Security, a think-tank, calls a 'cold test'—a simulated nuclear weapon which uses natural or depleted uranium rather than weapons-grade uranium. Israel's intelligence assessments repeat some of this information. They allege that a cohort of Iranian scientists have been working on overt and covert weapons-related research for years. This effort was originally part of Iran's formal nuclear-weapons research programme, known as AMAD, that it shut down in 2003, probably because it feared an American attack. The scientists' ongoing work is thought to be carried out under Iran's Organisation of Defensive Innovation and Research (also known by its Farsi acronym, SPND), under the cover of activity in fields like covid-19 vaccines and laser technology. One of a small number of non-scientists who were aware of the work was Major-General Mohammad Bagheri, who as chief of staff of Iran's military had oversight of both the regular armed forces and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). But the Israeli intelligence dossiers also contain information that, if correct, is genuinely new. They suggest that roughly six years ago the scientists formed a secret 'Special Progress Group', under the auspices of the former AMAD director, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. This group's aim was to prepare the way for a much quicker weaponisation process, if and when a decision was made by Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, to rush for a bomb. Mr Fakhrizadeh was assassinated by Israel in November 2020. On June 13th in the first hours of the war, the Israeli government published slides describing this backstory. But we have been told that it also shared further assessments with allies that suggest the Special Progress Group stepped up its research at the end of last year. Iran had a new incentive to advance to a bomb. It was reeling from the limited impact of its missile attacks on Israel, and the depletion of its air defences by Israeli strikes in October 2024. And it was facing the collapse of its proxies, Hamas and Hizbullah, in Gaza and Lebanon. Lastly, Israel's intelligence states that a meeting had been scheduled between the scientists and commanders of the IRGC's air force, who are in charge of ballistic missiles. The information shared by Israel with its allies argues this proposed meeting was a Rubicon, with the missile chiefs being let in on the secret for the first time, suggesting in turn that planning for the 'mating' process of a nuclear device to a missile warhead was about to begin. Iran had done some of this work in the past—in 2011 the IAEA cited claims that Iran had done computer modelling studies to see how a 'spherical payload', such as a warhead, would stand up to the stresses of being launched on a ballistic missile. Miniaturising and mating a warhead to a missile are highly complex tasks that could still take Iran a substantial time to master. Israel's new claims are feeding into an American intelligence community that already has a range of views on the Iranian threat. In March Tulsi Gabbard, America's director of national intelligence—and a longstanding opponent of war with Iran—repeated the view that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. In recent days the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and CNN have reported that American intelligence agencies are sceptical of the new Israeli claims. On June 17th Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the IAEA, said that his agency had not been presented with 'proof of a systematic effort to move into a nuclear weapon', although a week before the IAEA confirmed that Iran 'did not declare nuclear material and nuclear-related activities' at three undeclared locations in Iran. Mr Trump may nonetheless have been influenced by the Israeli view. On June 17th he declared, 'I don't care what she said,' referring to Ms Gabbard. 'I think they were very close to having one (a bomb).' David Albright, an American nuclear physicist and weapons expert who is consulted by intelligence agencies, says that most of the claims contained in the recent Israeli dossiers are 'generally accepted among (Western) intelligence communities'. However he accepts that there are claims that are new to him, over the diversion of nuclear material and the suggestion of an imminent meeting with missile forces. And he says that American intelligence analysts also agree that Iran has accelerated preparations for weaponisation—in July last year the director of national intelligence omitted the traditional wording that Iran 'isn't currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons development activities necessary to produce a testable nuclear device' in a report to Congress, according to the Wall Street Journal . Assuming Israel's dossiers are factually accurate, there is still room for what Mr Albright calls the 'the interpretation of the facts'. Even if American analysts accept that Iran has the intent to pursue a bomb and has accelerated its push, they may disagree that it has crossed a threshold or that the threat is truly imminent. Meanwhile, the Israelis, he says, 'may think it's a bit faster and worry about their own ability to detect and act in time'. Israeli officials used to present their assessments of Iran's nuclear push using timelines measured in months and years. Since the war began, they have talked of the 'point of no return'—a moment at which Israel would no longer be capable of halting an Iranian dash to a bomb. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's Prime Minister, has spent decades warning of the threat from Iran. That means confirmation bias is a risk. But the stance of Israel's intelligence community is unified and consistent with the government's view. Perhaps it has been put under political pressure, but it has clashed with Mr Netanyahu and other prime ministers on the nuclear file in the past. Now it backs the war. Nuclear physics is a science. Intelligence assessment is not, but has enormous real-world consequences. In 2003 America and its allies went to war in Iraq based on faulty assessments of its alleged weapons of mass destruction. In the opening strike of the war on June 13th, Israel assassinated key scientists and officials. Nuclear facilities have been bombed. The Israelis claim they have removed the imminent danger of Iran dashing towards weaponisation. Still, setting Iran's nuclear programme back by years also depends on destroying, or at least inflicting significant damage, on Iran's main underground uranium-enrichment plants in Natanz, and in Fordow, which has not yet been hit. Mr Trump may decide this is a job for America, whatever his spooks say.
Sky News AU
an hour ago
- Sky News AU
Worrying signs as US begins to evacuate diplomats from embassy in Israel
Former Australian ambassador to Israel Dave Sharma discusses the US evacuating staff from its embassy in Israel. This comes as United States President Donald Trump nears US intervention in the Middle East. 'The airspace is still closed, so the exit options from Israel are relatively limited,' Mr Sharma told Sky News Australia. 'Clearly, I would expect that we are working closely with the United States … and we would be seeking to match quite closely, however, they are treating their own nationals.'
