Embedded Materials: Strategic Materials Associated with U.S. Imports of Parts and End-Items

December, 2015
IDA document: D-5535
FFRDC: Systems and Analyses Center
Division: Strategy, Forces and Resources Division
Authors:
Authors
Eleanor L. Schwartz, James S. Thomason See more authors
The Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) has developed, within the context of the Risk Assessment and Mitigation Framework for Strategic Materials (RAMF-SM), a method for estimating the quantities of strategic materials that are associated with U.S. imports of parts and end-items that contain these strategic materials. These quantities are often referred to as embedded materials: they are embedded in imported goods, so United States industry does not need to use that amount of material to produce those goods. This paper presents some background, describes the estimation methodology, and presents a set of such estimates based on the data used to support the analyses for the Strategic and Critical Materials 2015 Report on Stockpile Requirements (U.S. Department of Defense, 2015).