While India’s Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative has advanced domestic defence assembly, its reliance on imported critical minerals poses a key vulnerability. Foreign monopolies dominate mineral refining, threatening advanced military hardware reliant on rare-earth elements, such as AESA radars and aerospace turbines. To address this, India launched the ₹34,300 crore National Critical Mineral Mission, established Rare Earth Corridors, and expanded overseas assets via KABIL. However, long lead times for international projects leave near-term risks unresolved. Achieving true sovereignty requires accelerating domestic processing capabilities and establishing physical Strategic Mineral Reserves for vital defence inputs.
When it comes to India’s indigenisation drive under Atmanirbhar Bharat, it has undeniably taken off well. India’s defence-industrial ecosystem has progressively been decoupled from foreign dependence. This is evident in domestic manufacturing of fighter platforms and ballistic missile shields and breakthroughs in Solid Fuel Ducted Ramjet technologies (SFDR), a missile propulsion system currently being developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). In February this year, DRDO successfully conducted a flight test of a SFDR from Chandipur. This has put India in the select list of countries that are capable of building long-range air-to-air missiles with the requisite speed and range. Nonetheless, there are a number of weaknesses present in the value chain system globally. Global defence supply chains are inherently vulnerable because advanced military hardware—such as AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) radars, hypersonic guidance modules, and high-power aerospace propulsion systems—relies heavily on refined critical minerals and rare earth elements (REEs) rather than domestic assembly lines alone. Consequently, while India has established localized design and platform assembly, its defence sector remains exposed due to fragile raw material security and limited chemical processing capabilities.
Role of Critical Minerals in the Weapons Chain
The architecture of the global critical mineral market is characterised by a stark asymmetry in which extraction is not the same as industrial refining. China dominates the world’s supply of critical minerals, producing over 60% of the elements mined globally, while its refining capacity with respect to these critical minerals far surpasses that of any other country.
Mere discovery of unrefined reserves or the acquisition of mining concessions will not suffice for a country to convert ore or monazite sand into defence-grade chemical compounds. This would require high-purity smelting and metallurgical processing capabilities that very few countries possess. Restrictions on the export of critical inputs like gallium, germanium, and antimony and specialised graphite show how this can be leveraged to hamper the defence production of adversaries. India is heavily reliant on imports to meet nearly 93% of its critical mineral requirements. Further, in the absence of local midstream infrastructure, its dominant mineral extraction causes overseas monopoly refining. This increases the vulnerability of domestic defence manufacturing to external shocks and grey-zone coercive statecraft.
Weapons, hypersonic flight vehicles, and vector-controlled thrusters rely on actuators powered with rare-earth permanent magnets. These mainly include Neodymium-Iron-Boron and Samarium-Cobalt alloys. At the same time, next-generation combat aircraft like the Tejas Mk2 and Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) utilise Gallium Nitride (GaN) semiconductor substrates in their AESA radars and electronic countermeasure systems. This enables vastly superior power density and detection range compared to old silicon systems. Add to this the reliance on Titanium-Tungsten alloys and Vanadium heat shields for aerospace turbines, and it becomes clear that a disruption at any node in these specialised mineral pipelines directly threatens manufacturing cycles and fleet maintenance.
Building the Domestic Pipeline
India has recognised these vulnerabilities and thus has executed a substantial policy shift to institutionalise supply-chain resilience; India has established a strategic blueprint spanning exploration, midstream processing, and recycling. This has been done under the National Critical Mineral Mission (NCMM), which has been launched with an overall outlay of ₹34,300 crore (comprising ₹16,300 crore in direct budget expenditure and ₹18,000 crore in expected PSU and private sector capital) spanning seven years. The changes in law to the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act have placed 24 essential and tactical minerals under the sole auctioning powers of the central government. As is evident, this regulatory shift has borne immediate results. India achieved a historic high in mineral block auctions, awarding 22 critical mineral blocks out of 212 total blocks auctioned across mineral-rich states, during the 2025–26 financial year. At the same time, the Geological Survey of India has undertaken a campaign targeting over 1,200 domestic critical mineral exploration projects by 2031.
To bridge the gap between raw extraction and defence-grade component manufacturing, policy frameworks have expanded to encompass dedicated downstream industrial ecosystems. Recent national budget provisions have set up unique Rare Earth Corridors in major coastal states (Odisha, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu) for local processing of monazite-rich beach sand. Complementing this is a targeted ₹7,280 crore manufacturing drive dedicated to establishing 6,000 metric tonnes per annum of domestic Rare Earth Permanent Magnet (REPM) production capacity. Through fiscal incentives to midstream magnet manufacturing and removing import duties on 24 raw critical minerals, New Delhi hopes to shield domestic aerospace and defence contractors from external market volatility while promoting a domestic process pipeline.
Beyond the country, India’s state-owned enterprise Khanij Bidesh India Limited (KABIL) has spearheaded overseas asset acquisitions; India secured the exploration rights over five lithium brine blocks that cover nearly 15,703 hectares in Argentina’s Catamarca province. The US-led Minerals Security Partnership (MSP) and the Quad Critical Minerals Initiative are other such examples of India’s plurilateral resource diplomacy. New Delhi's defence budget has risen roughly 15 per cent to ₹7.85 lakh crore, with over ₹63,000 crore earmarked for fighter aircraft and engines alone.
The Limits of Equity Abroad
Despite all these developments, it cannot be denied that overseas acquisitions come with long lead times and execution hurdles. For instance, the production from Argentina’s lithium blocks is projected for around 2030. Environmental approvals, drilling phases, and international infrastructure setup count as major factors for this delay. Though the overseas acquisitions secure resource claims, they do not offer immediate relief against near-term supply chain embargoes or price spikes.
To achieve true self-reliance, India must accelerate its domestic refining capacity alongside its global resource diplomacy. New Delhi needs to complement its mineral block auctions and overseas equity acquisitions by establishing physical Strategic Mineral Reserves—similar to its strategic petroleum stockpiles. These reserves should prioritise high-risk defence inputs such as dysprosium, neodymium, defence-grade gallium, and titanium. By treating critical minerals as vital national security infrastructure rather than mere commodities, India can bridge the gap between platform assembly and true technological sovereignty.
Conclusion
India’s progress in domestic defence assembly under Atmanirbhar Bharat represents a major step forward, yet its reliance on foreign critical mineral pipelines remains a critical vulnerability. Initiatives like the National Critical Mineral Mission and overseas asset acquisitions demonstrate strong strategic intent, but long development timelines offer little protection against immediate supply shocks. To ensure long-term defence sovereignty, India must rapidly scale up its midstream refining infrastructure and establish physical Strategic Mineral Reserves. Only by securing every node of the mineral supply chain can India safeguard its defence-industrial ecosystem from external coercion.
Mohammed Shoaib Raza is a Ph.D. scholar at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The views expressed here are his own.
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