4 ms·

Gallium: Why the US Cannot Produce Precision Missiles and Fully-Functional F-35s

41 points by SanjayMehta 2mo ago

jandrewrogers 2mo ago
One of the unique properties of gallium is that it does not form meaningful concentrated ores. The concentration of gallium in your backyard is roughly the same concentration as gallium literally everywhere. Consequently, every country has gallium. It is associated with aluminum production primarily because the waste stream coincidentally had some of the chemical extraction steps already applied, which saves money since you don’t have to apply them separately to the dirt in your backyard. China has a lot of gallium because they refine a lot of aluminum (cheap energy), and gallium is a secondary product. The US has a long history of refining aluminum but produce relatively little now. Nonetheless, the ability to refine gallium is not conditional on that. Anyone everywhere can refine gallium if they need it; marginal differences in cost don’t matter if it is strategically important and the amount of gallium required is quite small.
- OgsyedIE 2mo ago
  The marginal differences in labor and environmental costs are not small at all even when it is strategically important. During the Cold War when this was last an immediate issue the National Defense Stockpile had to act as a subsidy program to keep dozens of unprofitable smelting operations in the Gulf Coast, the Tennessee River Valley and the Columbia Valley afloat against competition from Scandinavia and East Asia because of these costs but this only created the new problem of what to do with the NDS, a controversial operation from the beginning. JFK criticised it again and again and put forward investigations with the aim of scrapping it. Nixon and Carter tried to scrap it only to face concerns about which senatorial districts would be harmed by months of flooding commodities markets. Reagan passed an act to mandate its liquidation and died years later before any sales had begun. All of these were accompanied by weeks of Congressional fighting that dominated the papers.
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 2mo ago
    The environmental costs are the same everywhere, the only regional differences are the form those costs take and who bears them.
tkel 2mo ago
AI-written article
- klooney 2mo ago
  > The reason is structural, not incidental It's almost insulting
- bouke 2mo ago
  > That is a decade-plus undertaking, not a budget line. Reads like your typical opus.
- SanjayMehta 2mo ago
  So what. Look at the info.
Lazare 2mo ago
Headline discusses missiles (which are topical); the article is mostly about radars in F-35s, and admits halfway through it's because a procurement schedule slipped. This is just clickbait; there's no content here.
- pseudohadamard 2mo ago
  And then it starts wandering into 6G and a bunch of other stuff. It's not even generic clickbait, it's just off-the-shelf yellow-peril clickbait.
danhon 2mo ago
Just once, it would be nice to read something where the publisher has put in some effort to at least hide the slop.
- polotics 2mo ago
  Well, be careful what you wish for. At least I was able to stop reading that thing pretty quickly: it's not unreadable, it's untrustable! ...and yes, adding non-LLMish malapropisms has become my Captcha...
sixtyj 2mo ago
There are 210 comments under the article - https://sonar21.com/the-galling-gallium-chokehold-why-the-us-cannot-produce-precision-missiles-and-fully-functional-f-35s/#comments https://sonar21.com/the-galling-gallium-chokehold-why-the-us...
jmyeet 2mo ago
This is one of hundreds of reasons why I laugh at the idea of the US going to war with China and being prepared for a war with China. That's never happening. Why? Because China can cut off so many critical supplies, not just for weapons but for the entire economy. And this self-proclaimed strategic threat comes from the same country that has been decisively militarily and strategicially defeated by Iran.
throwaway63467 2mo ago
Terrible AI written article, utter garbage.
ath3nd 2mo ago
[dead]
shermozle 2mo ago
> The honest framing is that It's a tell
jkman 2mo ago
Jesus this is terribly written by AI, what is the point of putting out this slop?
- tim333 2mo ago
  I found the content quite interesting even if the writing style is a bit LLM. I just bought a GaN charger - I have a few, and am interested in the ongoing military strategic brilliance of the current admin.

41 points by SanjayMehta 2mo ago

One of the unique properties of gallium is that it does not form meaningful concentrated ores. The concentration of gallium in your backyard is roughly the same concentration as gallium literally everywhere. Consequently, every country has gallium. It is associated with aluminum production primarily because the waste stream coincidentally had some of the chemical extraction steps already applied, which saves money since you don’t have to apply them separately to the dirt in your backyard. China has a lot of gallium because they refine a lot of aluminum (cheap energy), and gallium is a secondary product. The US has a long history of refining aluminum but produce relatively little now. Nonetheless, the ability to refine gallium is not conditional on that. Anyone everywhere can refine gallium if they need it; marginal differences in cost don’t matter if it is strategically important and the amount of gallium required is quite small.

OgsyedIE 2mo ago
The marginal differences in labor and environmental costs are not small at all even when it is strategically important. During the Cold War when this was last an immediate issue the National Defense Stockpile had to act as a subsidy program to keep dozens of unprofitable smelting operations in the Gulf Coast, the Tennessee River Valley and the Columbia Valley afloat against competition from Scandinavia and East Asia because of these costs but this only created the new problem of what to do with the NDS, a controversial operation from the beginning. JFK criticised it again and again and put forward investigations with the aim of scrapping it. Nixon and Carter tried to scrap it only to face concerns about which senatorial districts would be harmed by months of flooding commodities markets. Reagan passed an act to mandate its liquidation and died years later before any sales had begun. All of these were accompanied by weeks of Congressional fighting that dominated the papers.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 2mo ago
  The environmental costs are the same everywhere, the only regional differences are the form those costs take and who bears them.

tkel 2mo ago

AI-written article

klooney 2mo ago
> The reason is structural, not incidental It's almost insulting
bouke 2mo ago
> That is a decade-plus undertaking, not a budget line. Reads like your typical opus.
SanjayMehta 2mo ago
So what. Look at the info.

Lazare 2mo ago

Headline discusses missiles (which are topical); the article is mostly about radars in F-35s, and admits halfway through it's because a procurement schedule slipped. This is just clickbait; there's no content here.

pseudohadamard 2mo ago
And then it starts wandering into 6G and a bunch of other stuff. It's not even generic clickbait, it's just off-the-shelf yellow-peril clickbait.

danhon 2mo ago

Just once, it would be nice to read something where the publisher has put in some effort to at least hide the slop.

polotics 2mo ago
Well, be careful what you wish for. At least I was able to stop reading that thing pretty quickly: it's not unreadable, it's untrustable! ...and yes, adding non-LLMish malapropisms has become my Captcha...

sixtyj 2mo ago

There are 210 comments under the article - https://sonar21.com/the-galling-gallium-chokehold-why-the-us-cannot-produce-precision-missiles-and-fully-functional-f-35s/#comments https://sonar21.com/the-galling-gallium-chokehold-why-the-us...

jmyeet 2mo ago

This is one of hundreds of reasons why I laugh at the idea of the US going to war with China and being prepared for a war with China. That's never happening. Why? Because China can cut off so many critical supplies, not just for weapons but for the entire economy. And this self-proclaimed strategic threat comes from the same country that has been decisively militarily and strategicially defeated by Iran.

throwaway63467 2mo ago

Terrible AI written article, utter garbage.

ath3nd 2mo ago

[dead]

shermozle 2mo ago

> The honest framing is that It's a tell

jkman 2mo ago

Jesus this is terribly written by AI, what is the point of putting out this slop?

tim333 2mo ago
I found the content quite interesting even if the writing style is a bit LLM. I just bought a GaN charger - I have a few, and am interested in the ongoing military strategic brilliance of the current admin.