What If the Most Resilient Rare Earth Supply Chain Uses No Rare Earths?

Moog and Niron Magnetics are testing rare-earth-free permanent magnets for defense actuator applications, taking a fundamentally different approach to critical-material supply-chain risk. Instead of diversifying the source, they are working to remove the dependency. For manufacturers, the development raises a larger question: when should supply-chain risk be traced, diversified or engineered out entirely?

The critical-material industry is investing billions to answer one question:

How do we build more resilient supply chains?

Most answers begin with diversification.

Develop new mines.

Build new processing capacity.

Qualify alternative suppliers.

Reshore manufacturing.

Establish ex-China material pathways.

All are essential strategies.

But Moog and Niron Magnetics are demonstrating another possibility.

What if you redesign the system so that one of its critical-material dependencies disappears?

A Different Approach to the Magnet Problem

Moog and Niron Magnetics are collaborating on electromechanical actuator technology incorporating Niron's Iron Nitride permanent magnets.

Unlike conventional high-performance permanent magnets that rely on rare-earth materials, Niron's technology is designed to eliminate rare earth elements entirely.

Moog is testing and qualifying the technology for actuator applications including land vehicles and guided munitions.

The companies plan to demonstrate Iron Nitride magnets installed in tested motor hardware at the Association of the United States Army's 2026 Annual Meeting and Exposition.

The technology is not yet a blanket replacement for every rare-earth permanent-magnet application.

Qualification, integration and commercial-scale manufacturing still matter.

But the strategy itself deserves attention.

Instead of asking:

“Where else can we source the rare earths?”

Moog and Niron are also asking:

“Can we remove the requirement for them?”

That changes the supply-chain equation.

Resilience Has More Than One Path

Critical-material supply-chain resilience is often discussed as though there is one solution.

There isn't.

Different materials, applications and performance requirements demand different strategies.

For some systems, the answer may be a diversified rare-earth supply chain built around trusted domestic and allied sources.

For others, recycling may reduce exposure to virgin material.

Some applications may require strategic inventories or multiple qualified suppliers.

And technological innovation may allow other systems to substitute the critical material entirely.

These strategies should not necessarily compete.

They can complement one another.

Moog itself makes this point: securing the domestic magnet supply chain will require multiple strategies as future actuation systems are designed.

That is an important distinction.

Supply-chain resilience is not simply about finding more material. It is about reducing the consequences when a material becomes unavailable.

You Cannot De-Risk What You Cannot See

Material substitution does not make supply-chain intelligence less important.

It makes understanding dependencies more important.

Before an engineering or procurement team can decide whether to diversify, substitute, reshore, recycle or stockpile a material, it first needs to understand where the exposure exists.

Which components depend on critical materials?

Which suppliers sit behind those components?

Where are the underlying materials sourced and processed?

Which dependencies are concentrated?

Which alternatives have been qualified?

And what evidence supports those conclusions?

Without visibility, organizations are reacting to supply-chain risk.

With visibility, they can begin designing around it.

Traceability Is a Decision-Making Tool

This is where the conversation around traceability needs to evolve.

Traceability should not exist simply to create a longer record of where something travelled.

Its value comes from what organizations can do with that information.

A manufacturer that understands its material dependencies can identify concentration risk.

A procurement team with structured supplier information can evaluate alternatives faster.

An engineering team can see where material substitution might remove a vulnerability altogether.

A defense contractor can better understand which components require deeper qualification or sourcing evidence.

And when a critical material remains necessary, provenance and chain-of-custody information can help demonstrate that an alternative supply chain is what it claims to be.

Traceability turns supply-chain information into actionable intelligence.

The Goal Is Not to Trace More. It Is to Carry Less Risk.

At TracePass, our focus is on making critical-material supply chains easier to understand, verify and transact through structured documentation, source-of-origin visibility and supply-chain validation.

But the objective is not traceability for traceability's sake.

The objective is reducing risk.

If a critical material can be responsibly sourced through a diversified, transparent supply chain, organizations need the infrastructure to verify it.

If recycled material can reduce primary supply exposure, its provenance still needs to be understood.

And if technology can eliminate a vulnerable material dependency altogether, that can be an equally powerful resilience strategy.

The important thing is knowing enough about the supply chain to make that decision deliberately.

From Material Sovereignty to System Resilience

The Moog–Niron collaboration represents an important evolution in the critical-material conversation.

Governments and industry are working aggressively to build new domestic rare-earth mines, processing capacity and magnet manufacturing.

That work remains essential.

But the next generation of resilient systems may also be designed around a broader principle:

Do not only secure vulnerable supply chains. Reduce vulnerability wherever engineering allows it.

For defense and advanced manufacturing, that creates a more sophisticated model of resilience:

Trace what you need.
Diversify what you can.
Substitute where it works.
Verify what remains.

The strongest critical-material strategy may ultimately be the one that combines all four.

Because supply-chain resilience is not measured by how much material we can trace.

It is measured by how confidently industry can keep operating when the supply chain changes