The U.S. military needs tungsten, but pristine NASA site may stand in the way

According to a report by the Financial Times, the U.S. military seeks a domestic source of tungsten, a vital mineral for weapon production. However, a significant deposit of this metal in Nevada remains untapped due to restrictions from a NASA facility.

This tungsten deposit, located in the eastern Nevada section of the Great Basin Desert, is estimated to hold nearly two million metric tons. Mining company 3 Proton Lithium (3PL) aims to develop the site, but approximately one-third of it lies within territory designated for NASA’s satellite calibration activities. This untouched area allows NASA to adjust and ensure the accuracy of instruments on its Earth-observing satellites.

For over 33 years, NASA has utilized Railroad Valley for these calibration purposes. In 2023, the Bureau of Land Management officially granted NASA exclusive access to around 92 square kilometers (22,634 acres), effectively prohibiting other public or private uses.

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NASA described Railroad Valley as “uniquely suited” for its needs due to its dry lake bed, which is “large, flat, free of vegetation, of a consistent surface color, undisturbed, easy to access, and with good visibility from space.”

The largely featureless landscape is crucial because NASA technicians know exactly how much reflected light satellites’ optical instruments should see in the area. Among the missions that use the land are Landsat, which monitors Earth’s land and water resources; Suomi NPP, a weather and climate observation platform; and the Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT), which maps the composition of arid dust that blows around the planet.

This is not the first time 3PL has tried to exploit this land: a previously found lithium deposit set up a possible conflict with the space agency in 2023—and NASA won. In a statement about the new deposit that was released on Monday, 3PL said it has estimated that its claim contains 31 million tons of lithium carbonate equivalent; if confirmed, that would make it among the largest lithium resources in North America. The site also includes large amounts of boron and potash, 3PL said. The latter is a salt that is often used to make fertilizer, which the U.S. almost exclusively imports.

“We now have a measured, world-class deposit of multiple critical minerals in one basin, and the one discovery that surprised even us is tungsten,” said 3PL chairman and chief financial officer Kevin Moore in the statement. “This is a metal the United States stopped mining a decade ago and now imports while China controls and manipulates the global market. To find more of it here than anywhere, alongside large, measured lithium, potash, and boron at world-class grade, is not a mining story. It is a national security story.”

Tungsten’s usefulness stems from its resilience to heat: it has the highest melting and boiling point under typical conditions of any element, which made it perfect for use in older generations of light bulbs. It also has the highest tensile strength of any metal and is denser than lead; these qualities make it ideal an ideal material for making weapons. The need for tungsten has become even more pressing because of the ongoing war with Iran, which has seen the U.S. fire off large amounts of munitions that contain the metal, such as Tomahawk missiles.

Despite its importance to the military, the U.S. has long lagged in production of the material. A February report from the U.S. Geological Survey showed that the country produced a negligible amount of the material in 2024 and 2025. By contrast, China’s mines produced 67,000 metric tons of tungsten in each of those years, accounting for almost 80 percent of global production.

A NASA spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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