Forecast Uncertainty in Critical Material Stockpile Needs

This issue of IDA Research Insights highlights IDA contributions to the Department of Defense (DoD) biennial report to Congress on recommended stockpiles of strategic and critical material (e.g., rare earth elements, metals, and carbon fibers). The United States relies heavily on imports of many of these materials from Asian, South American, African, and European countries. The IDA-developed Risk Assessment and Mitigation Framework for Strategic Materials (RAMF-SM) suite of models was used to help the DoD determine material stockpile requirements in the 2015 biennial report to Congress. IDA researchers examined the sensitivity of the stockpile requirement estimates in the 2015 report to variability in the underlying data in the economic modeling and found that sensitivity to data variations could induce a 5-percent difference in projections of material stockpiles.