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"Reading the "Naval Times"


I note that most of the replacements are either black or women.I do so
hope that they are well qualified. Why all of a sudden are so many found
to be fire for loss of confidence when many have only been on the job a
few months and others for years. The Female Commander that could not be
placed in a Pentagon position due to claims of opposition that she was
not qualified for that high a job with so little experience and
education. She is now being appointed for head of the VA system. I
cannot fathom why she would be sent to the VA if she is not capable of
the Pentagon job. I pray to God that the appointing fools are not
playing politics with our much needed effective/efficient Military while Dithering China Joe is playing Russian Roulette with our beautiful America.

Another subject seems worry-some also:

https://www.defensenews.com/congress/budget/2022/06/08/the-us-is-heavily-reliant-on-china-and-russia-for-its-ammo-supply-chain-congress-wants-to-fix-that/


Some of the rare metals used in American munitions comes from China

WASHINGTON — The United States has relied almost entirely on China — and
to a lesser extent Russia — in recent years to procure a critical
mineral that is vital to producing ammunition.

The mineral antimony is critical to the defense-industrial supply chain
and is needed to produce everything from armor-piercing bullets and
explosives to nuclear weapons as well as sundry other military
equipment, such as night vision goggles.

Antimony is now on the front lines of recent congressional efforts to
shore up the strategic reserve of rare earth minerals, known as the
national defense stockpile. The stockpile includes a multitude of other minerals critical to the defense-industrial supply chain such as
titanium, tungsten, cobalt and lithium, but lawmakers expect will become insolvent by fiscal 2025 absent corrective action.

The House Armed Services Committee took its first stab at addressing
China’s grip on the antimony supply chain in draft legislation it
released Wednesday. A report accompanying the bill would require the
manager of the national defense stockpile to brief the committee on the
status of antimony by October while providing “a five-year outlook of
these minerals and current and future supply chain vulnerabilities.”

“The committee is concerned about recent geopolitical dynamics with
Russia and China and how that could accelerate supply chain disruptions, particularly with antimony,” the report noted.

The draft legislation would also require the Defense Department to
instate a policy of recycling spent batteries to reclaim “precious
metals, rare earth minerals and elements of strategic importance (such
as Cobalt and Lithium) into the supply chain or strategic reserves of
the United States.”

The House’s readiness subcommittee is expected to approve the draft text
on Thursday, and the Armed Services Committee is set to advance the
legislation as part of its annual defense authorization bill later this
month.

After Japan cut off the U.S. supply of antimony from China during World
War II, the United States began procuring the mineral from ore in an
Idaho goldmine. However, that mine ceased production in 1997.

“There is no domestic mine for antimony,” according to a 2020 report
from the U.S. Geological Survey, a government agency. “China is the
largest producer of mined and refined antimony and a major source of
imports for the United States.”

The report noted that China is “losing market share with Russia, the world’s second-ranked producer,” with Tajikistan gaining ground in the global market as the world’s third-largest supplier of antimony.

Lawmakers’ recent interest in shoring up the national defense stockpile
of strategic minerals marks a significant about-face for Congress, which
had repeatedly authorized multimillion-dollar sales of the reserve over
the past several decades to fund other programs.

At its peak during the beginning of the Cold War in 1952, the stockpile
was valued at nearly $42 billion in today’s dollars. That value has
plummeted to $888 million as of last year.

The Defense Department submitted its own legislative proposal to
Congress last month, asking lawmakers to authorize $253.5 million in the defense authorization bill to procure additional minerals for the stockpile.

Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., who sits on the House Armed Services
Committee, led seven Republicans in April in asking the defense
appropriations subcommittee to provide an additional $264 million in
funding for the stockpile for FY23.

“The current stockpile is inadequate to meet the requirements of great
power competition,” the lawmakers wrote. “The [national defense
stockpile] is no longer capable of covering the Department of Defense’s
needs for the vast majority of identified materials in the event of a
supply chain disruption.”

bnVsbA==

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