MILITARISM IN THE NT NEWSLETTER
Hello!
Welcome to the seventh edition of the Militarism in the NT newsletter. I plan to send out a newsletter with updates on US and Australian military plans and presence in the NT, and perhaps in northern Australia more broadly, roughly monthly.
Further information on the context and intention behind this newsletter at the bottom of the text.
Central Australian mine appears set to supply rare earths to US military industries
On October 20, Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese and US president Donald Trump announced that they were signing the United States–Australia Framework for Securing Supply in the Mining and Processing of Critical Minerals and Rare Earths. The framework, Anthony Albanese announced in a press release, would “deliver a US/Australia secured supply chain for critical minerals and rare earths, required for defence and other advanced technologies”.
The agreement includes commitments by both countries to invest at least $1 billion USD each within six months into “priority” mining and processing projects in both jurisdictions, and commits both countries to set a floor price for critical minerals. The framework includes a raft of other measures including “streamlined” permitting processes and environmental deregulation in a context where 79.2% of Australia’s critical minerals mines are either on land where First Nations people hold native title rights, or where native title claims are pending. The geopolitical aim of the agreement is of course to reduce dependence on China for critical minerals and rare earths, which as of 2025 controls around 70% of global rare earth mining operations and approximately 90% of the world’s rare earth processing capacity. The agreement, gushes US national security think tank the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, advances “both nations’ ambitions for energy and minerals dominance”.
The Critical Minerals and Rare Earths Framework comes nearly four months after the US Department of Defence (recently renamed the Department of War) announced that it was partnering with US rare earths company MP Materials to develop a “mine to magnet” supply chain in the US. MP Materials owns the Mountain Pass mine in California, the only operating rare earth mine and processing facility in the United States. Gina Reinhart’s Hancock Prospecting is a major shareholder, owning a 7.5% stake in the company. As part of that agreement, the US Department of Defence became the largest shareholder in MP Materials, announced that it would guarantee a floor price of $110 USD per kilogram for neodymium-praseodymium (NdPr) oxide, provide funding to expand MP Materials’ processing and magnet production facilities, and committed to buying all magnets from the company’s yet-to-be-built 10X Facility for a decade.
Arafura Rare Earths’ Nolans Project
One of two projects on the Australian continent selected for equity investment by the Australian government as part of the agreement is Arafura Rare Earths’ Nolans project, located on Anmatjere country 135 kilometres north of Alice Springs. Gina Reinhart’s Hancock Prospecting is Arafura’s largest shareholder, with Reinhart nearly doubling her stake in the company to ~ 15.7% following the announcement of the Critical Minerals and Rare Earths Framework. The project will receive $100 million AU in equity investment, on top of the $840 million AU debt finance package it received from the Australian government in 2024, and the $200 million AU from Australia’s National Reconstruction Fund in 2025. Arafura Rare Earths was one of seven Australian companies to receive a Letter of Interest from the US Export Import Bank for a further $300 million USD in finance.
At full production, Arafura’s Nolans Bore project will produce approximately 4,440 tonnes per annum of neodymium–praseodymium (NdPr) oxide – two rare earth elements generally used in conjunction in high-performance neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnets. This would be 4–5% of global NdPr oxide supply and up to a quarter of global supply coming from outside China, giving the project outsized geopolitical importance given China’s recent (now-deferred) export controls on rare earth elements, and prohibitions on rare earth elements going to overseas military manufacturers.
At Nolans Bore, Arafura intends to operate an open-cut mine and separation facility. Ore will be processed on site into NdPr oxide, a process which is notoriously toxic. According to Arafura’s referral form under the Environmental Protection Biodiversity Act (EPBC) for the Nolans Project, “about 150 tonnes of uranium and 2,000 tonnes of thorium will be contained in residues produced at the RE [Rare Earths] process plant [on the site of the Nolans Project] each year”. This waste will need to be reprocessed or interred for long term storage in a radioactive waste dump such as Tellus Holdings’ proposed Chandler Project on Southern Arrernte Country, 120 kilometres south of Alice Springs. Both projects; the nuclear waste dump and the rare earths mine, appear to be prime candidates for the “national interest exemption” contained in Labor’s newly-released draft reforms to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. Grounds for exemption include “Australia’s defence or security”, but the draft legislation also provides ample room for ministerial discretion in determining what constitutes “national interest’, including anything deemed beneficial to Australia’s relations with its “allies”.
A Recent History of US Interest in the Project
It’s clear that the US government is keen for a portion of the rare earths mined at the Nolans mine to go to the US, even as much of the supply from the Nolans project is already contracted. Rare Earth Exchanges writes that “Arafura’s A$200 million infusion from Australia’s National Reconstruction Fund in 2025 was likely tied to future U.S. supply chain participation or off-take agreements not publicly disclosed, hinting at behind-the-scenes coordination with Washington”.
In May of this year, John Parkinson of Rare Earth Exchanges noted that “U.S.-based institutional investors appear to be aggressively building positions in Arafura Rare Earths”, namely major US investment firms Vanguard, Fidelity, Dimensional Fund Advisors, Charles Schwab Investment Management, and Tidal Investments. These firms, wrote Parkinson, “may be anticipating that Arafura is earmarked for a future U.S.-aligned supply chain, possibly with off-take agreements, defence contracts, or strategic stockpile purchases”.
“When heavyweight asset managers enter a pre-revenue critical minerals play en masse, particularly in a sector as geopolitically sensitive as neodymium-praseodymium (NdPr)”, Rare Earth Exchanges continued, “it often follows high-level briefings, signals from defense and trade authorities, or direct knowledge of pending strategic deals”.
Source: Rare Earth Exchanges thread
At present, Arafura Rare Earths has binding offtake agreements with South Korean companies Hyundai and Kia for 43% of planned annual production of NdPr oxide from its Nolans mine (1500 tonnes/ annum); a binding agreement with German company Siemens Gamesa starting at 200 tonnes/ annum; a binding agreement with Luxembourg-based minerals trader Traxys Europe for 100 tonnes/ annum; and a non-binding agreement with General Electric Renewable Energy for an unspecified quantity of NdPr oxide annually.
Source: Rare Earth Exchanges thread
In April of this year, Arafura’s managing director Darryl Cuzzubbo stated that “34% of the product from Nolans” remains to be contracted. Speaking from New York on October 25 after the United States–Australia Rare Earths Framework was announced, Cuzzubbo said of the Framework that “[e]ssentially, through the agreement, Australia is giving somewhat preferential treatment to its critical minerals, to the US”.
While Arafura’s offtake agreements to date do not include US military industries (both South Korean companies Hyundai and Kia produce weapons systems and military vehicles), the mine’s inclusion in the United States–Australia Rare Earths Framework, alongside statements from Anthony Albanese and Donald Trump, suggest this is likely to change soon.
Military Utility of Neodymium-praseodymium
Neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnets are core components for a wide range of contemporary military technologies. Each Lockheed Martin F-35 warplane, for instance, used extensively by Israel in its genocide in Gaza, contains 418 kilograms of rare earth elements, with neodymium-praseodymium making up a substantial portion of that mass. General Atomics’ MQ-9 Reaper drone, used by the US military to surveil Gaza throughout the genocide and to conduct drone strikes on Yemen for close to a decade, contains “10-15 kg of NdPr in its magnet-based propulsion systems and sensors”. Boeing’s Joint Direct Attack Munition; a technology that converts unguided bombs into precision-guided munitions; thousands of which have been provided to Israel throughout a bombardment that has leveled an estimated 84% of Gaza’s buildings, contains neodymium-praseodymium as part of the mechanism that guides the bombs.
ABOUT THE MILITARISM IN THE NT NEWSLETTER
Many people are aware of US and Australian military presence in the NT, but perhaps less people are aware of just how much this military presence is intensifying as a perennially belligerent US prepares for war with China, and how much a new wave of extractivism in the NT is bound up with the US military industrial complex. For the fiscal year 2024/2025, northern Australia is “the top overseas location for U.S. Air Force and Navy construction spending, with more than $300 million set aside under the U.S. congressional defence authorisations for those years”, Reuters reports. Over the next decade, the Australian government will spend $30 billion on “hardening and upgrading” northern military bases, “partly to meet US requirements and partly paid for by the United States”.
The Northern Territory jurisdiction has participated in the US/Israeli holocaust in Gaza via the provision of intelligence gathered at the Pine Gap Joint Defence Facility in Central Australia to Israel’s Signals Intelligence National Unit, and on to the Israeli military. The Northern Territory government is also busy renewing settler dominion at “home” by imprisoning unprecedented numbers of Aboriginal people. Politicians and the media have once again manufactured a racialised crime hysteria that is seeing Aboriginal children being brutalised by the police, prison wardens and an ever-expanding private security and surveillance apparatus. The mayor of Alice springs has called for the military to be deployed in the town.
The newsletter is motivated by a desire to contribute to activist movements against militarism and extractivism on this continent, and the deprivations of ecological justice and land rights for First Nations they cause. It is conceived as a small contribution to the international fight against imperialism and an effort at solidarity with colonised and subjugated peoples struggling for liberation and justice. It is also intended to precipitate more reporting and investigative journalism on these issues on the part of independent journalists and journalists working within traditional media organisations.
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