The defense industrial base has spent the past five years quietly absorbing the same supply chain shock that reshaped automotive: the realization that batteries — once a checklist line item — have become a strategic raw material. From the submarine batteries on Block IV Virginia-class boats, to the high-energy cells in soldier-worn power systems, to the directed-energy weapon magazines that defense laboratories now treat as the dominant power architecture of the 2030s, lithium-ion and emerging solid-state chemistries are increasingly the binding constraint on what defense systems can do and how long they can do it. The supply chains behind those cells lead, with rare exceptions, through China. The U.S. defense industrial response is now visible in DPA Title III investments, in DoD Battery Strategy publications, and in a wave of domestic cell and material capacity that did not exist three years ago.

What is striking about the defense battery story is the pace of change. As of mid-2026, defense battery procurement no longer looks like the procurement of three years ago — and the next two years will move faster still.

The Defense Battery Demand Profile

Defense battery demand is more concentrated and more specialized than commercial demand, but the volumes are no longer small. The Department of Defense's National Defense Industrial Strategy explicitly identifies battery supply chain as a national security priority, with multiple program-of-record demand signals across the services (U.S. Department of Defense, 2024).

Soldier Power

The Army's Conformal Wearable Battery (CWB) family and follow-on programs alone now consume tens of thousands of cells annually. The transition to higher-density chemistries — silicon-anode and lithium-metal lines — would substantially extend soldier endurance but requires industrial-scale production that the U.S. base is still standing up.

Vehicle and Vessel

Hybrid combat vehicle prototypes, submarine batteries, and electrified mobile platforms have created sustained demand for prismatic and pouch-format cells in form factors and chemistries different from the cylindrical 18650/21700 cells that automotive demand has scaled.

Directed Energy

High-energy laser and high-power microwave weapons require energy storage architectures unlike anything in the commercial battery market: very high peak power, fast recharge, and ruggedization for military deployment. The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering has been pushing capacitor-battery hybrid architectures with multiple primes including BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon (OUSD R&E, 2025).

DoD Investments to Date

The DoD has committed more than $1.4 billion in DPA Title III and IBAS funding to battery materials and cell production since 2022 (DPA Title III, 2024). Notable awards include:

American Battery Factory (Tucson, AZ): $130 million toward LFP cell production scaling for defense and grid applications.

Albemarle (Kings Mountain, NC): lithium hydroxide processing capacity expansion supporting both EV and defense feedstock.

Lithium Nevada Thacker Pass: DoE-led financing supporting one of the largest U.S. lithium mining and refining projects.

Talon Metals (Tamarack, MN): DPA Title III award supporting domestic nickel and cobalt production from the Tamarack project.

Solid Power and QuantumScape: solid-state cell development support targeting defense applications by 2028.

Where China's Leverage Lives

Mining gets the political attention. The leverage, again, lives in the midstream and the cell production itself. China processes more than 80% of the world's lithium hydroxide, refines two-thirds of cobalt, produces over 70% of cathode active materials, and manufactures the bulk of separators and electrolyte chemicals (USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, 2025). Each of these midstream stages is a potential export-control lever, and Beijing has demonstrated willingness to apply leverage on graphite, gallium, antimony, and germanium since late 2024.

Chemistry as Strategy

The chemistry choices defense makes are themselves supply chain choices. Three trends define the next 24 months.

Cobalt-Free Chemistries

LFP (lithium iron phosphate) and LMFP (lithium manganese iron phosphate) chemistries eliminate cobalt entirely, at the cost of some energy density. Skydio, Anduril, and several Army programs have already pivoted toward cobalt-free chemistries for unattended ground sensors, attritable drones, and vehicle auxiliary power. The supply chain hardening is significant.

Silicon-Anode and Lithium-Metal

Higher energy density chemistries — silicon-dominant anodes and lithium-metal anodes — offer 20–40% improvements over conventional graphite-anode lithium-ion. Defense applications that pay for energy density (soldier-worn power, ISR sensors) are the early adopter base. Companies including Sila, Group14, and Amprius have received DPA Title III or IBAS funding (Sila Nanotechnologies, 2024).

Solid-State for Defense First

Solid-state batteries — long promised in EV applications and consistently slipping in commercial timeline — may arrive in defense use cases sooner than commercial. Defense systems can absorb higher costs, lower form-factor flexibility, and tighter operational windows. Solid Power, QuantumScape, and other developers are seeing defense customers move ahead of EV customers in production agreement timing.

What Defense Suppliers Should Do Now

Treat cell chemistry as a strategic decision: the choice of LFP vs. NMC vs. silicon-anode vs. solid-state is not a procurement decision. It is an architecture decision with five-year supply chain consequences.

Pre-qualify domestic cell producers: the U.S. and allied cell base is small. Qualification cycles are 12–18 months. Programs that wait until production ramps will not have qualified suppliers.

Engage on midstream investment: DPA Title III and IBAS dollars continue to flow into materials and processing. Primes willing to offtake or co-fund midstream stages will move to the front of queues.

Build recycling pathways now: end-of-life cell recycling will become a meaningful supply source by 2030. Programs that ignore recycling will miss a domestic feedstock channel.

Electrolyte and Separator: The Quiet Midstream

Cell production gets the political attention. Electrolyte production and battery separator manufacturing are equally important and even more concentrated. The U.S. base for battery-grade electrolyte salts — primarily lithium hexafluorophosphate — is essentially non-existent at industrial scale; nearly all U.S. cell production relies on imported electrolyte. Separator film production is similarly concentrated, with Asahi Kasei, Toray, and SK IE Technology dominating global capacity. The U.S. capacity for polyethylene and polypropylene separators is being expanded with DOE and DPA Title III support, including projects at Celgard's North Carolina facility (U.S. Department of Energy, 2024).

The midstream investment story is the determining factor for whether the U.S. cell base scales meaningfully through 2028. Cells without domestic electrolyte and separator are cells with a single-point-of-failure import dependency.

Directed Energy: A Different Power Architecture

Directed energy weapons require energy storage that does not look like an EV battery. Pulsed power applications — high-power microwave weapons and certain laser architectures — depend on capacitor-battery hybrid systems, modular high-voltage racks, and thermal management that is closer to power electronics than to consumer batteries. The Office of Naval Research and Air Force Research Laboratory have funded multiple capacitor-battery hybrid demonstrators with BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, and General Atomics (Office of Naval Research, 2024).

The industrial-base implication is that directed energy demand will not simply absorb commercial cell capacity. It requires its own supplier base — capacitor banks, switchgear, ruggedized power converters — that overlaps with but does not duplicate the consumer battery base. The defense companies tracking this distinction are investing in different supplier relationships than those who treat directed energy as 'just more batteries.'

Recycling Loops and Strategic Stockpiles

End-of-life battery recycling has matured rapidly since 2022. Redwood Materials, Ascend Elements, and Li-Cycle now operate U.S. recycling capacity capable of recovering lithium, nickel, cobalt, and manganese from end-of-life cells at commercial yield. The Department of Energy's recycling investments and the Defense Logistics Agency's strategic materials interest have together accelerated this base. Recovered battery materials are increasingly part of the defense supply mix (National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 2024).

Recycling is not a replacement for new production. It is, like the rare earth recycling story in an earlier post in this series, a credible bridge that provides domestic feedstock during the multi-year ramp of mining and refining capacity. The defense programs that integrate recycled cell materials into their qualification matrices early will have meaningful supply chain optionality that those who do not will lack.

The Solid-State Timeline, Honestly

Solid-state battery promise has been consistent for a decade; commercial delivery has not. The 2026 environment is different in two ways. First, defense customers are willing to absorb higher costs and earlier-stage technology in ways automotive customers are not. Second, the specific failure modes that have slowed automotive solid-state — cycle life, manufacturing yield — are less binding in defense applications where mission cycles are shorter and per-unit costs are higher. Solid Power's defense agreements and QuantumScape's emerging defense partnerships represent the leading edge (QuantumScape, 2025).

The honest forecast is that solid-state batteries will deploy first in soldier-worn power, ISR systems, and certain directed-energy magazines. They will not deploy first in main battle tanks or submarines. The defense industrial base is positioning for a phased solid-state rollout starting in 2027 — a meaningfully different timeline than the consumer automotive base is planning around.

Powering the Decade

Batteries have moved from infrastructure to weapon. The chemistry, the cell production, the midstream — all of it sits inside the defense industrial base in a way that would have been hard to imagine in 2018. The investments now underway are significant and necessary. They are not complete. The defense systems that win in the 2030s — longer-endurance soldier kits, hybridized combat vehicles, directed-energy weapons, autonomous undersea vehicles — will all run on cells whose supply chains are being built today. The battery front is real. The next decade of U.S. defense capability runs through it. The companies, regulators, and program offices that recognize this will shape the outcome. Everyone else will be customers of someone else's choices.