Using Ukraine Supplemental Funds, DoD Grants $24.8 Million to Idaho Mining Firm for Bullet Materials

(CNS News) – The Department of Defense (DoD), through its Defense Production Act (DPA) Investments Program, issued its first critical minerals award of $24.8 million to Perpetua Resources Idaho, Inc. to “secure an American source of critical minerals for missiles and munitions.”

The $24.8 million grant comes from Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations funds.

The DoD announced the award in a Dec. 19 press release, explaining that the funds will help Perpetua to obtain a “Final Environmental Impact Statement, a Final Record of Decision, and other ancillary permits.” 

Perpetua will obtain these permits through “environmental and engineering studies” through 2024, said the DoD.

This federally-funded work will be conducted for Perpetua’s Stibnite-Gold Project, located in central Idaho.

According to Perpetua’s website, the company has spent the previous decade surveying the Stibnite Gold Project site, and developing a plan to both redevelop the previously-mined area, and also mining it for additional minerals.                   

The Stibnite Gold Project produced antimony trisulfide for the U.S. ammunition industrial base in World War II and the Korean War. According to the DoD, Perpetua’s Stibnite Gold site is the only “domestic geologic reserve of antimony that can meet Department of Defense requirements.” 

The DoD’s investment in Perpetua’s Stibnite Gold project “is essential to ensure the timely development of a domestic source of antimony trisulfide for the manufacture of small arms and medium caliber cartridges, as well as many other missile and munition items,” reads the press release. 

According to Halimah Najieb-Locke, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Resilience at Perpetua, “the Department’s DPA Investments Program is delivering on its core mission to restore domestic industrial capabilities essential to the national defense by enabling the warfighter.” 

“This action reinforces the Administration’s goals to increase the resilience of our critical mineral mineral supply chains while deterring adversarial aggression,” she added. 

The DoD’s DPA Investments Program “is dedicated to ensuring the timely availability of domestic industrial resources to support national defense and homeland security requirements now and in the future.” 

The DPA Investments Program works with the military services, government agencies, and the defense industry to “identify areas where critical industrial capacity is lagging or non-existent,” said the DoD.

The Program then engages with the industry in the U.S. and Canada “to mitigate these risks using grants, purchase commitments, loans, or loan guarantees.” 

The DPA “reduces the Nation’s reliance on unreliable foreign sources, ensures the integrity of materials supplied to the American Warfighter, and helps create a resilient, robust, and secure defense industrial base,” according to the DoD. 

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