US Army secures giant rare earth magnet deal to build one million military drones

The U.S. Army is turning to a domestic magnet maker for a component that could become critical to its plan to build 1 million small drones each year.

Vulcan Elements has won a competitive Army selection to supply neodymium-iron-boron magnets for the SkyFoundry drone initiative. The magnets will go into brushless motors used to power the Army’s small unmanned aircraft.

SkyFoundry aims to establish a large-scale U.S. production pipeline for small drones. The Army plans to run the effort through Tobyhanna Army Depot in Pennsylvania.

The choice of magnet supplier points to a challenge that sits deeper in the drone supply chain. Producing large numbers of aircraft requires reliable access to components that are often overlooked when discussing the finished machines.

Magnets behind small drones

Neodymium-iron-boron magnets can deliver strong magnetic fields from relatively small components. That makes them useful in the compact brushless motors found across small unmanned aircraft.

Vulcan was selected after submitting technical data that met the Army’s required performance specifications. The company also underwent evaluations of its manufacturing capabilities and previous customer work.

The Army required suppliers to maintain a fully domestic and vertically integrated manufacturing process. Vulcan says its own supply chain does not depend on China for its materials, technology, software, or intellectual property.

John Maslin, CEO of Vulcan Elements, said the requirement matters as drones become more important to military operations. “Rare earth magnets are foundational to the military capabilities that we need to defend our country, including drones,” Maslin said. He added that the company wants to restore domestic production of the magnets needed for those systems.

The award represents Vulcan’s 10th Department of War contract. Its previous work has covered programs across the U.S. military, according to the company.

Giant magnet plant next

Vulcan is constructing a 1.1-million-square-foot magnet factory in Benson, North Carolina. The facility is expected to produce up to 10,000 metric tons of magnets annually once it reaches full capacity.

The company describes the plant as the largest rare earth magnet factory outside China. It expects the project to create about 1,000 manufacturing jobs.

Those magnets will not be limited to military drones. Vulcan plans to supply them for robotics, automobiles, semiconductor manufacturing and data center infrastructure.

That capacity could become particularly relevant as the Army pushes drone production toward much larger volumes. SkyFoundry’s annual target would require a substantial supply of motors and other components alongside the aircraft themselves.

The Army’s Sprint 2 seven-inch FPV drone program offers a glimpse of the type of small aircraft that could benefit from the effort. Each vehicle may be compact, but producing them at scale creates an industrial challenge far larger than the individual drone.

Vulcan’s selection places one piece of that manufacturing chain inside the United States. The company now has to turn its planned factory capacity into the magnet supply needed to support programs such as SkyFoundry.

Source: https://interestingengineering.com/military/army-vulcan-elements-rare-earth-magnets-drones