Industry forum sparks debate on critical materials recovery

At a Philadelphia gathering of defense and industry leaders on Aug. 26, Defense Logistics Agency Disposition Services Director Mike Cannon outlined a push to turn military excess and scrap into manufacturing feedstock, pointing to early efforts to recover critical materials and new contracting approaches to draw in private partners.

Speaking during a roundtable titled “The Above Ground Mine: Recycling and Recovering Critical Materials” at the Defense Industrial Base Accelerator 2026 conference, Cannon said the agency has been testing ways to reclaim high-value inputs from end-of-life equipment. Recent trials include harvesting germanium from night-vision optics, producing high‑grade titanium powder from aircraft components, and recovering boron carbide from unusable body armor. With nearly 30 companies at the table, he posed a central question: “What capability currently exists in industry that we can leverage to reclaim critical materials?”

Among the near-term targets he flagged is niobium contained in magnets inside the many computer hard drives DLA destroys on behalf of the military. Cannon described that stream as ready-made for scale: “I think that could be an easy button for us,” he said, noting that commercial capacity to extract and convert materials to feedstock already exists. “Then we just start shipping boxes of hard drives to this [contract] company so we can get it back into the hands of people making stuff.”

Participants also weighed supply chain mapping, federal policy, and commercial incentives to close the loop between military and commercial end-of-life property streams and national security supply needs. Options under discussion included profit-sharing mechanisms that would let recyclers retain or sell a portion of recovered materials, and multi-firm arrangements in which one contractor specializes in extraction and another converts the output into usable stock.

Cannon said interest in the concept—long nurtured inside DLA—has recently accelerated. “Something we have been talking about for three or four years has finally gotten some attention,” he said. “… It was a very productive conference, and we – this organization – have a good reputation, both within industry and within the department. I had lines of people coming to talk with me.”

DLA Disposition Services, working with the agency’s research and development team, DLA Strategic Materials, and headquarters operations and policy staff, has been evaluating the feasibility of extracting critical minerals and chemicals from scrap and excess items turned in at its global reverse logistics sites. In addition to germanium, titanium, boron carbide and potential niobium recovery, the agency is examining future opportunities involving beryllium, tungsten, nickel, aluminum, and select plastics and polymers.

The DLA delegation included Courtney Carroll, a process integrator coordinating critical materials recovery across the agency. Carroll noted the conference’s strong emphasis on strategic materials and supply chain visibility. “The DIBX allowed me to see the dedication that government and industry have with strategic/critical materials,” Carroll said. “It helped me learn that capabilities exist, we just have to find the right areas that DLA fits into and leverage existing programs and industry to be successful.”